Dr. Aoife Neary:

To respond to Deputy Funchion, who brought up evaluation, it is key and it brings legitimacy. Recommendation No. 9 of the Informing the Future of the Sex and Relationships Education Curriculum in Wales report is the inspection of RSE in a very formal way as part of an inspectorate's work. It should come in tandem with research support and the evaluation aspect of a network that would take in the spiral notion of the curriculum and continuing professional development and training, which should happen in a meaningful way.

Deputy Paul Murphy asked about age appropriateness. A number of international studies mention age appropriateness, including Pound et al., as I mentioned. That was a review of RSE in ten different countries across 25 years that mentions the spiral curriculum needing to happen from early years, which is a significant finding. It would be from age three onwards. Professor Emma Reynold's work in the UK explores how children are not too young in a primary school context to engage with the concepts of RSE, gender and sexuality and so on. In the US context, Ryan et al.and Martino and Cummin-Potvin's work illustrates how primary age children from as young as four can make sense of and question structures of disadvantage and privilege related to gender and sexuality in an age appropriate way, of course, and in partnership with parents. Robinson and Davies have, in an Australian context, work relating to early childhood and caution against this notion of age appropriateness policing us and we should not make assumptions about what is age appropriateness but rather speak with children and young people and find out where they are. It is a notion of the living curriculum. Another aspect is the fear that this might be for parents at this age. The problem with just being educated by parents is that the most vulnerable in our society will not get the same education for RSE. For a fair and equal system, it should be comprehensively across the board and across all primary schools.

Renold speaks about consent as something that can be talked about from early years, such as three onwards, and taking in concepts of refusal, language and communication. The three year old might say "I do not like that". We can start with such simple language. Similarly, with LGBT identities, the INTO LGBT teacher group introduced a resource called "Different Families, Same Love", and it again has age-appropriate language usable from four onwards which mentions love, mammy and mammy, mammy and daddy, daddy and daddy, and the variety of family forms, including mammy on her own, daddy on his own and others that could be evident. It makes it very real and possible from early ages and there is nothing to be frightened about.

I welcome Deputy Paul Murphy's comment about amending the Education Act 1998. From an LGBT perspective, amending section 37(1) of the Employment Equality Act 1998 would remove chill factor for teachers in respect of being recruited and dismissed. In a study I did on primary schools to explore homophobia and transphobia, we found that teachers are afraid to approach these topics because they are afraid of the reaction of parents and that in some way it is contrary to the ethos of the school. That ambiguity needs to be cleared up and the amendment of the Education Act would be an excellent place to start from that perspective.