The evolution of Gillian Anderson’s career offers an easy way to highlight the generational divide: do you know her as an FBI special agent or a sex therapist?

The younger generation will know her as Jean Milburn, an outspoken sex therapist in the Netflix series Sex Education. The programme has been a hit with audiences around the world, but, as its writer Laurie Nunn recently told The Washington Post, she wanted the show to go beyond entertainment and be an antidote to the “really, really bad” sex education she got at school. It’s fair to say that some of us who remember Anderson for her role in The X Files feel similarly about the information that we were given as teenagers.

Attitudes towards sex education are constantly evolving. Go further back in time to the 1970s and you would find the UK in the grip of a moral panic about the use of the book The Little Red Schoolbook and the film Growing Up: A New Approach to Sex Education to teach children about sex and relationships in classrooms (see box, below). 

We have undoubtedly moved on since then, with relationships education becoming compulsory for primary pupils and relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory for secondary students from September 2020. But the new statutory guidance hasn’t been without its own controversies: some say that the advice doesn’t go far enough, that it’s not given the space it needs in schools and that there’s a lack of progress on LGBTQ+ inclusion; others think the advice goes too far on all of these points.

For Sophie King-Hill, senior fellow at the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham, there is one significant factor that’s working against the introduction of the new curriculum: the Covid-19 pandemic.

“That’s the elephant in the room,” she says. “I know how much pressure teachers are under now; they are picking up the pieces after Covid. My concern is that RSE will be done to a bare minimum. It’s not the schools’ fault, but it will be the schools that get the blame.”

Even forgetting the pandemic, experts have questioned the Department for Education’s process in making RSE a compulsory subject: where is the timetable space, the training and the resources?

“Schools are in a conundrum: they can’t really prioritise it as it’s not a properly tested subject,” says Jessica Ringrose, 
professor of the sociology of gender and education at UCL Institute of Education. “To me, this government is doing a disservice to schools by saying it’s a [statutory] subject, [but] not training teachers and not giving them time to actually deliver it.”

But both King-Hill and Ringrose are adamant: this is not a subject that students can do without. “[It is so] dangerous if we don’t educate our young people properly about sex and relationships,” says King-Hill. “Students need to be understanding what is going on with them before they can sit down and do algebra.” 

Making sure that teachers have adequate training to deliver sex education is crucial, King-Hill adds. Without this, many staff may lack the confidence to explore topics in the necessary detail. For example, would you ask your Year 9s to come up with a list of all the sex slang that they know? If this is the stuff of your nightmares, you’re not alone - but this is precisely what King-Hill did in one session. 

“I learned quite a lot, too,” she admits. “You let them all have a laugh, and then you can say, ‘We are going to use the right terminology now.’ It worked like magic: it got all the shame, all the nervousness out, and they were so mature afterwards.”

Shame, King-Hill adds, plays a big part in sex education still being marginalised - in schools as well as in society. “I am a big advocate of talking about [sex] to kids from as soon as they can ask the questions because it loses the stigma then,” she says. 

But if it is not your subject specialism, teaching about sex can be a daunting task. “This is only adding pressure on teachers, and the government can’t just introduce a compulsory element to the curriculum without putting in support and resources first,” King-Hill says.

Ringrose says that, in her opinion, the training modules that the DfE released in September leave a lot to be desired. For this reason, she took matters in to her own hands and, with the training provider School of Sexuality Education, developed additional guidance for schools, specifically around tackling online sexual violence. This, she says, is an area that urgently needs more research. 

Another area that needs more work is LGBTQ+-inclusive sex education, says King-Hill. “There is not enough of it. I think that schools are worried; this is a legacy of section 28 [the law that made it illegal for schools to promote the teaching of “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship” between 1988 and 2003],” she explains.

Schools should be given the resources to pay for experts to come in and work with young people here, she adds, instead of asking teachers to shoulder all the responsibility.

Ringrose agrees. “You will hear a lot of teachers and students who are very concerned that they are not getting the type of information that is needed … and these are social justice issues, to learn about sexual diversity,” she says.

So, while sex education has undeniably moved on since the 1970s, there are still issues about how it is taught in schools. But how have attitudes changed? Is there a desire to ensure that all our young people receive the necessary support?

King-Hill isn’t sure how much things have truly changed on this front. “I think it’s changing very slowly,” she says. “If you think back to the 1970s and 1980s, there was a moral panic around the Aids crisis, teenage parents ... We [also] couldn’t educate people in school around homosexuality.” 

She adds that, thanks to the internet and social media, young people now feel more comfortable speaking up - as exemplified by the website Everyone’s Invited, where young people have shared their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse - and this is helping society to talk about sex more.

However, she warns that old problems persist. “You just have to scratch beneath the surface and the moral issues people have with sex are still there,” she says.

Ultimately, despite some serious steps forward, sex and relationships education in our schools still requires improvement - and changing attitudes is perhaps the first step towards improving outcomes. 

Claudia Civinini is a freelance journalist

This article originally appeared in the 10 December 2021 issue