The Government’s 2025 Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), and Health Education Statutory Guidance introduces some welcome clarifications — particularly on parental rights and transparency—but overall it represents a troubling continuation of the 2019 Guidance, relating to the way children should be taught about sex and relationships. While it strengthens the position of faith schools and affirms a parent’s right of access to teaching materials, it also continues to grant wide discretion to activist teachers and risks undermining the role of parents in their children’s moral formation.
The new guidance comes into force in September 2026. This article examines key areas of the guidance and considers how parents can respond.
Parental Engagement and Transparency
The 2025 RSHE guidance is clear that parents must be informed about and consulted upon content taught in RSHE. The key question is whether or not this promise has any meaningful value, given that, in practice, there is no right to withdraw from RSHE and parents have no right to ‘veto’ resources or content that teachers intend to deliver. At first glance, the apparent commitment to parental engagement seems promising, but, under further scrutiny, it is clear that the new guidance merely pays lip service to parental authority.
The 2025 guidance rightly insists that ‘all materials should be available to parents’ (p.5). For too long, schools have used commercial RSHE packages shielded from parental scrutiny, and have often used the excuse of ‘copyright’ and ‘licensing agreements’ to refuse parents’ reasonable requests to view what their children are being taught. In 2023 the then Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, wrote to all schools to inform them that copyright laws do not prevent them from sharing materials with parents, and that any contractual agreements with external providers preventing them from doing so are ‘void and unenforceable […] because they contradict the clear public policy interest of ensuring that parents are aware of what their children are being taught in sex and relationships education’. The Conservative Secretary of State’s mandate to schools on this matter has been retained word for word in the new guidance (pp.33-34).
Clearer rules on transparency provide parents with leverage: they can review what is taught and prepare their children in advance. This is an important victory. If schools comply, parents will finally be able to challenge inappropriate or ideologically driven resources and ensure their children’s education reflects their family values. Even if a parent decided not to withdraw their child from a lesson, this gives parents the opportunity to discuss issues with their children as they arise in school. However, without the complete right of withdrawal from any aspect of RSHE this remains only a partial victory for parents. As it stands, parents may be able to view appalling content their children are being taught, but still be powerless to do anything about it. The guidance is also clear that ‘parents are not able to veto curriculum content’ (p.34).
The Right to Withdraw
Parents retain the legal right to withdraw their children from sex education in primary schools. This important absolute right remains intact. However, for children in secondary schools, parents only retain the legal right to ‘request’ the withdrawal of their children from ‘sex education’ (but not from ‘relationships education’). The guidance reminds us:
‘Parents have the right to request that their child be withdrawn from some or all of sex education delivered as part of statutory RSE.’ (p.3)
This safeguard is valuable, but the guidance muddies the waters by failing to define what counts as ‘sex education’ versus ‘relationships education’. Schools may attempt to smuggle explicit or ideological content into ‘relationships’ lessons, beyond the reach of parental withdrawal.
Parents should use this ambiguity to their advantage. Whenever content strays into sexual matters, they should request withdrawal. Acceptance of such a request may not automatically be granted, so persistence is often essential. They should also seek to ensure that the question of what constitutes ‘sex education’ forms part of the mandatory parental consultation process.
It is also important to note that parents only have the right to ‘request’ withdrawal from sex education at secondary school. The 2025 guidance continues to allow children to override their parents’ decision to withdraw them from sex education ‘from three terms before the pupil turns 16’. It also continues to encourage head teachers to put parents through the patronising process of having to discuss with them the reasons for their request, and for parents to be told why it may not be in the best interests of their children to grant that request (p.6). Whilst head teachers at primary schools ultimately have to comply with the parents’ wishes, heads at secondary schools retain the right to refuse the request in undefined ‘exceptional circumstances’, with vague examples being given such as ‘safeguarding concerns or a pupil’s specific vulnerability’ (p.6).
Relationships Education in Primary Schools
The 2025 guidance affirms relationships education as being compulsory in primary schools, with the stated aim of helping children ‘build positive relationships’ and protect themselves from abuse. Some of these intentions are good — children should certainly learn about boundaries, privacy, and the importance of speaking out against abuse. However, the framing raises serious concerns. Schools are told:
‘Teaching should illustrate a wide range of family structures in a positive way … [including] same-sex parents.’ (p.26)
While the law recognises same-sex marriage, this directive moves far beyond just the acknowledgement of legal recognition to present it as morally equivalent to natural marriage between a man and a woman. This erases the views of many families of faith and imposes an ideologically constructed definition of ‘family’ upon very young children, especially as the guidance pontificates that children ‘should respect those differences [of family structure] and know that other children’s families are also characterised by love and care’. This attack on normative heterosexual marriage and parenting is a destabilising and disturbing influence on children, which could lead them to question their own family life and affect the course of their personal and relational development.
The 2025 guidance also recommends that even primary pupils may be taught about pornography or ‘the pressure to share naked images’ (p.29) if schools judge it ‘relevant’. Such content, while intended as preventative, risks prematurely sexualising children who may otherwise have remained innocent of such matters. The recommended minimum ages for teaching this sort of content, which was a key feature of the previous Government’s draft 2024 guidance, did potentially assist in the safeguarding of children from age-inappropriate information. The published 2025 guidance removes this valuable protection of age-limits. For many parents, this leaves children vulnerable to the normalisation of adult topics, including contested definitions of family. Parents must be prepared to challenge and, where possible, withdraw their children from such lessons.
Sex Education in Primary Schools
Sex education itself remains optional in primary schools, though the guidance ‘recommends’ it be taught in Years 5 and 6, aligned with the science curriculum:
“The national curriculum for science includes… reproduction in some plants and animals… Schools may also cover human reproduction in the science curriculum, but where they do so, this should be in line with the factual description of conception in the science curriculum.” (p.12)
This emphasis on biology, rather than ideology, is encouraging. It also important to point out that human reproduction, as well as any other aspects of sex education, are NOT statutory parts of the National Curriculum for Science for primary schools. Even puberty is a non-statutory part of the primary science curriculum.
Crucially, parents retain an absolute right to withdraw their children from sex education at primary school. We strongly advise parents to exercise this right where they feel the material is inappropriate or premature, including where it is being delivered as part of relationships education, PSHE or science.
LGBT Content and Gender Identity
One of the most contentious areas is ‘LGBT content’. The guidance requires that by the end of secondary school, pupils should understand ‘all protected characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender reassignment’ (p.67).
Importantly, it warns schools not to teach contested ideas as fact: ‘They should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity.’ (p.70) This seems like progress. Yet the wording is slippery. Schools are told not to ‘endorse’ any one view, but they are free to present multiple perspectives—including that of gender ideology—as long as they stop short of declaring them factual.
This neutrality is dangerous. In practice, activist teachers will still be able to introduce children to gender identity theories under the guise of ‘balance’. Parents must be vigilant: scrutinise lesson plans, demand access to resources, and challenge any suggestion that everyone even has a ‘gender identity.’ Further, it is important for parents to note that within the guidance, LGBT+ lifestyles are presented as equivalent to heterosexual, reproductive relationships. In other words, it appears that the full range of sexual options are to be presented to children as equally valid. This is not a morally neutral stance; this is a particular worldview which has the potential to disturb and alienate many families.
Sexual Harassment and Violence
The new guidance includes extensive material on sexual harassment and violence, urging schools to confront sexism, misogyny, ‘homophobia’, and harmful online content. It emphasises that ‘the victim is never to blame’ and that boys should not be stigmatised as perpetual perpetrators (p.80).
These points are sensible, but the execution will be difficult. Schools are told to model ‘positive masculinity’ and encourage students to reflect critically on harmful influences online. Yet one wonders whether this will truly avoid demonising boys or whether the prevailing cultural climate will lead to male students feeling unfairly targeted. Also, the deliberate deconstruction by the guidance of the natural differences between the sexes, as well as marriage and the natural family unit, itself undermines important traditional notions of manhood and womanhood. The vocation to be a husband, father, wife or mother, for example, can inspire boys and girls to grow in responsibility and maturity, especially as they observe their own parents.
Once again, parental oversight is essential. Lessons on misogyny and harassment must be delivered with nuance and sensitivity, and, to be truly effective, in the context of traditional family values.
The Bigger Picture
In the end, what is most striking about the 2025 guidance is how unambitious it is for children. It largely accepts the ubiquity of pornography, the dominance of harmful online influencers, and the contested redefinitions of family and gender. Instead of resisting these trends, the state seems intent on adapting children to them.
Do we really want the Government, not parents, to define what counts as a family? Do we want our children taught about pornography and naked images before they are ready? Do we want schools presenting contested gender theories as if they were just another ‘viewpoint’?
Parents must resist the creeping normalisation of ideology in the classroom. The State’s role should be limited and factual. The responsibility for teaching children about relationships and sex belongs first and foremost to parents.
As the new guidance itself admits, schools must be transparent. That transparency must be taken up by parents to review materials, challenge content, and, where necessary, exercise the right to withdraw. Above all, parents can remind schools that religious belief is a protected characteristic too, and that it has every right to be what is taught to their children. The State has no mandate to compel moral values.
The message to parents is simple: stand firm. Our children’s moral and emotional development is too important to outsource to the State.
ParentPower Team
