Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. As he may know, calls for inclusive and robust relationships and sexuality education, RSE, and social, personal and health education, SPHE, curricula have been made for some time. It is has come to the fore in recent months, having been reflected in the ancillary recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly and Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution and it is the top priority of the LGBTI+ youth strategy for which 4,000 respondents made a similar call. It has become apparent that the current model is not fit for purpose. The ad hoc nature of SPHE and RSE is failing to fully equip young people with positive and informed outlooks on their sexual health, self-care, body image, relationships, gender identity, contraception, consent and sexuality. For young people, who are learning how to have relationships and going through their formative years, the value of teaching positive ideals to them will shape their outlooks throughout their lives.This is not the case when elements are excluded. When LGBTQI young people or young people with disabilities are excluded from these conversations, they are forced to attempt to piece together an informed, but potentially distorted, view of relationships and sexuality from a one-size-fits-all model that is delivered in a heterosexual and able-bodied context in the hope of staying safe. When consent is excluded from the conversation, we fail to teach young people how to respect another's boundaries or give confidence in asserting their own.

I have worked with the Senators Grace O‘Sullivan and Lynn Ruane on this issue for almost a year, meeting a variety of different teachers, students, groups and organisations to understand how we could bring about robust and inclusive curricula. First, there is a major obstacle in legislation, namely the Education Act 1998, which determines that ethos-based schools can essentially derogate from certain aspects of a curriculum that they believe contravene the "characteristic spirit" of a school.While the Department has issued circulars stating that schools are required to teach "all aspects of family planning, STIs and sexual orientations", they also should also uphold the ethos of the school. The issue is that this creates a grey area and many schools either act with indifference, omission or direct defiance of this circular, leaving teachers too afraid or vulnerable to suggest inclusive elements. This is a constant theme.

Furthermore, many teachers do not feel supported, adequately trained, resourced and insisted upon to teach all aspects of SPHE and RSE. They feel that, by and large, schools treat it as a box-ticking exercise and a distraction from core subjects, and do not appreciate its potential. Many teachers have received no formal training and what we are hearing is that the curriculum is ad hoc and, in practice, lacks formal characteristics. Not all ethos-based schools confine the SPHE and RSE models to heterosexuality and many work hard to ensure their pupils are informed in an inclusive setting.