Teacher confidence not school ethos the biggest barrier to sex education, Dáil committee told

School ethos is not the barrier to teaching Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) it can be perceived to be, the Dáil Committee on Gender Equality was told today.

Following a review, “what we found was that the biggest barriers to inclusive effective and child-centred RSE was teacher confidence and competence,” said Dr Patrick Sullivan, deputy chief executive of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA).

“What can happen is that, with a teacher who is feeling unconfident and maybe a little bit unsure of themselves in the classroom, that they can think about, ‘maybe I can’t address that particular issue, maybe it’s not age and stage appropriate for me to speak about this issue with these groups of children,’” he said. That was where teacher development came in which “can really support that effective negotiation, navigation of the tricky terrain that can happen in classrooms”, he said.

NCCA education officer Annette Honan told the Committee how “we met groups of teachers, students, school leaders and parents across 20 schools as part of the review of a variety of types of schools and we didn’t fudge it. We directly asked: ‘Is school ethos a barrier to more effective RSE or is it inhibiting you in any way in addressing topics across the curriculum?’ It didn’t come up unprompted,” she said. “For the most part they identified other things that were much more an issue in terms of enabling them to become more effective, or disabling them, as the case may be,” she said.

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They also spoke “to the management bodies, the trustees, the representative bodies”, said Ms Honan. “One said, ‘we are really keen to address the myth that Catholic schools are standing in the way of good RSE.’ It is the view of Le Chéile — that’s a collection of Catholic schools — that ‘a school’s first duty is to educate and care for students. Students need to get information and have a right to this knowledge so that they can make informed decisions.’ And that is quite typical of the response of some of the church representative groups,” she said.

“We’re not doubting that there’s mixed experiences,” added Ms Honan, “and sometimes individual teachers indeed might have the perception that school ethos is a barrier and we need to address that too, but there are other more systemic issues and fundamental issues to be addressed as well.”

The Le Chéile Schools Trust represents approximately 60 secondary schools throughout Ireland run by 15 Catholic religious congregations.

Senator Fintan Warfield said: “There are definitely teachers I know, non-religious teachers who work in religious schools who feel a bit spooked at times.” He also recalled how “at recent festival a comedian asked, ‘Who here still has nightmares about their Leaving Cert?’ And everyone put up their hand. We’re literally traumatising kids with exams — how do you change that culture?”

NCCA director Dr Jacqueline Fallon told the committee of the lengths the organisation went to in consulting children. “We are very focused on consultation with children. For example we’re currently undertaking consultation with babies, toddlers, and young children on the updating of the early childhood curriculum framework and that’s being carried out by a consortium across a number of academic institutions,” she said.

The NCCA had “just completed a consultation with primary schoolchildren to contribute to the development of the finalisation of the primary curriculum framework. We’re also sponsoring a study that is being carried out by the School of Education in UCD, the Children’s School Lives study,” she said.

Ms Honan said that “one of the first things we say going out to consult with young people is ‘you are the experts in your learning, you are the experts in your lives. I don’t know what it’s like to be a 12-, 13- or 14-year-old today but I really need you to tell me so that we can then reflect that in the curriculum and create a curriculum for you that is relevant to your lives and your needs, not my perception of what your needs are.’ They really appreciate that and respond very well,” she said.

Addressing issues of belonging, gender stereotyping and gender norms, Dr Sullivan said: “The spectrum of views on this in the general public is vast.” He warned “there are cautionary tales around the world on this. Our nearest neighbours, for instance, in recent years have had mass walkouts, opt-outs from minority faith communities” in schools.

Committee chair Ivana Bacik noted how “Ireland is unique in having such a large number of single-sex schools still, at both primary and post-primary, but especially primary where it’s really against the norm of European countries”.