Members of the Oireachtas have urged the Government to halt the rollout of the new Social, Personal, and Health Education (SPHE) curriculum amid concerns over sexually explicit material being included among resource options for twelve to fifteen-year-olds.
On Wednesday, Senator Sharon Keogan called on Education Minister Norma Foley to address the Seanad on the junior cycle SPHE curriculum, after allegations emerged of the explicit resources being promoted to teachers on a Dublin City University (DCU) course.
It follows previous concerns over the promotion of transgender ideology raised last month by Independent TD Carol Nolan and Fine Gael’s Charles Flanagan.
Safeguarding
Keogan said the Minister needs to assure Senators that resources approved by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment and training delivered by DCU were in accordance with the Children First Act 2015, the guidelines to which, she reminded the House, state that a child should not be exposed to “inappropriate or abusive material”.
Michael Collins TD, the leader of Independent Ireland, said recent revelations were “deeply concerning for both parents and teachers”. He stressed: “We are talking about the safety and well-being of our children. There must be accountability, and this curriculum must be thoroughly reviewed before any further damage is done.”
And Kerry Deputy, Danny Healey-Rae, told the Dáil earlier this week that he was “very worried” about the SPHE curriculum introduced by the Government and urged the Minister to “put a stop” to the programme and “carry out an urgent review” in response to parental concerns about “explicit content”.
In response to the concerns, Foley said that materials viewed by teachers on the DCU course were for adults only and would never be used in a classroom setting.
Pro-trans
In September, TDs Carol Nolan and Charles Flanagan called for a review of the same curriculum after evidence emerged of an ideological bias.
One SPHE textbook, ‘Health and Wellbeing SPHE 1’, claimed that a “person’s sex is assigned at birth”, and directed pupils to the discredited Genderbread Person graphic, which claims there are an infinite number of gender identity “options” and that sex ‘exists on a continuum’.
Mrs Nolan told Gript: “The recent controversy has served to throw a much needed spotlight on the relentless and radical ideological colonisation of our school curriculum by fringe perspectives that have no support or appeal outside the academic echo chamber”.
Flanagan also urged ministers to “review the entire programme”.
Teachers
The Association of Secondary Teachers in Ireland has said that teachers should not be forced to deliver sex education classes.
The teaching union wrote to school officials to say teaching staff should not be made to take SPHE or Relationships and Sexual Education lessons without “full and comprehensive training”.
From 2027, SPHE will be mandatory for 15 to 18 year olds for the first time, and will cover gender, pornography, relationships and sexual consent. The curriculum says LGBTQ+ relationships and identities should be “fully integrated” into the teaching.
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