By Conor Kelly
The education system is failing children and young people. It’s been over a year since the Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) released their report on the dire state of sexual health education across the UK. Only last year the curriculum was amended to include abortion rights. But in practice this isn’t being met in most schools, with RSE still being optional Influenced by attitudes of parents and the religious ethos of most schools here which further limits the teaching and content. Young people have no autonomy over their own right to education.
The solution offered is to have our overworked and underpaid teachers shoulder the burden of facilitating RSE with no additional training or resources. It should not be a surprise that In the context of conscious targeting of far-right, misogynistic, racist and LGBTQ+phobic content at young boys online especially, teachers and parents are ill-equipped to challenge the harmful and dangerous content. This has real-world impact beyond the classroom. Misogynist and queerphobic hate crimes are on the rise. The Public Prosecution Service Northern Ireland found a 23.1% increase in reported sexual offences between 2022 and 2023 with the real number likely being much higher.
Northern Ireland’s lacklustre RSE is simultaneously a symptom of and contributer to the patriarchal capitalist system we live under which allows young boys and men to act with impunity. Most famously was the so-called ‘Belfast rape trial’ where rugby players accused of rape were acquitted among a flurry of articles fawning over their ‘bravery’ while the 19-year-old victim was dismissed as ‘just a silly girl … causing so much trouble for the lads’. Such events shape the culture young people grow to understand. When discussing misogyny with a group of pupils one told me matter-of-factly, referencing the bullying and harassment of young girls, “We’re stronger than them, why shouldn’t we?”. He is 12 years old.
This is a cyclical issue, and an intended one too. According to the ETI, teachers report both a lack of training and their own background/experiences causing obstacles in their facilitation of RSE. Many young people, teachers and parents agree that the current approach to RSE is failing them, but their demands fall on deaf ears or fade into the pages of reports and meetings, with no practical change being achieved. We must demand that school curriculums – including and beyond RSE – are democratically developed by students, teachers and experts free of influence from the church. Then we can begin to shape and maintain LGBTQ+ inclusive, consent and communication based RSE which can benefit all ages and genders.
In the recent period, there has been an escalation in state repression in Northern Ireland. For example, the use of “supergrass” evidence in the trial of loyalists. A particularly worrying development is the return of internment.Republican Marian Price is being held in solitary confinement in Hydebank Prison in Northern Ireland. She was arrested after she held up a sheet of paper so that a masked member of the Real IRA could read a statement at an Easter Rising commemoration in Derry. As she was previously released “under license”, the state retains the right to return her to prison at any time.
