Informed consent is missing in action

A parent digs up the detail of RSE lessons

Rodney Hide’s description this week of the trouble he had to go to to dig up the content of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) lessons at his daughter’s school (“Sex education at Wakatipu High”), demonstrates that schools are falling far short of their legal requirement to provide meaningful information to parents on the topic.

After detailing the content that he had to pay to gain access to, Rodney concludes, “I wrote to the Board Chair concerned about the material and informed consent. Parents are unaware of the content and are advised the course is compulsory when it is not. The curriculum itself is recommended by the Ministry but is not required. The school must choose the curriculum. It is the school’s choice.”

A year ago, in our post, “Consultation - use it or lose it”, we discussed the MoE recommendations for effective consultation and what parents are entitled to expect from their schools.

With many schools soon to embark on their required biennial community consultation, this is a timely reminder that “consultation requires more than just a notification of what is to happen” and that the process should be “seen to be undertaken in good faith”.

Top tips for a meaningful consultation:

• Ask the school to provide all materials that will be used with your children, including worksheets, videos, and graphics, so that you have sufficient, relevant information. No materials should be withheld for copyright reasons. 

• Assert your right to be given sufficient, relevant information, a draft statement on the delivery of health education, and time to comment on the draft. A tick box exercise without content detail is not proper consultation.

• Ask for the same information to be provided to all parents in written form and for a consultation meeting to be well-advertised in the school community.

• Make sure you go into the consultation well-informed about gender ideology terminology and armed with evidence of its harms (See RGE’s website.) A good source of robust evidence is the Cass Review, summarised in our substack in April: Cass on Education.

Questions to ask:

• How does the school define sex? Does the school teach children that humans can change sex? If so, where is the scientific evidence to support that belief? (There is none.)

• How does the school define gender identity? Does the school encourage body dissociation in children by validating the use of puberty blockers and cross sex hormones? Does the school undermine familial relationships by keeping secrets from parents?

• Do the definitions of sex and gender identity used by the school align with scientific facts as well as the views of the school community?

• What policies are in place to show respect to those who don’t believe in gender identity theory? How will the school ensure that no-one is pressured to endorse a belief they do not hold?  

• Will the school confirm that all teaching of RSE content will be in dedicated lessons, and that RSE will not be embedded throughout the curriculum, as recommended by the MoE. Embedding the content thwarts your right to withdraw your children from some or all lessons.  

• What process will be followed to allow the community to reach a consensus on the RSE topics that are age appropriate and will be covered at each level at school, and which questions will be referred to parents for answering? (See RGE’s Alternative lesson plans and Question flowchart. https://www.resistgendereducation.nz/information/lesson-plans)