Principals At Odds Over New Relationships And Sexuality Framework

Friday, 9 May 2025, 5:46 pm
Article: RNZ

John Gerritsen, Education correspondent

Consultation on the draft relationships and sexuality framework for schools closes on Friday, and some primary principals worry it is too explicit for their pupils.

Meanwhile, a group of health education experts are warning the proposed content is a backwards step that makes trans people invisible.

The draft was published after the government canned guidelines for teaching the subject because New Zealand First objected to what it called "gender ideology".

The draft framework proposed teaching five-year-olds about body parts and seeking and refusing permission, while Year 8s at intermediate school would learn about harmful sexual activities and sexual orientation.

A Principals' Federation group that considered the document concluded that some of the proposed content was being introduced too early.

"Complex concepts such as consent, coercion and sexual activity are introduced too early in Years 0-8 and would be better positioned at later stages," it said.

Whangārei Intermediate principal Hayley Read, a member of the group, said some topics would be better taught at secondary school.

"Some of the content that is purported to be taught at a Year 8 level refers to sexual activity, and we just don't believe it's appropriate because the age of sexual activity for our kids is 16, so getting into that space so early I think is is a little bit challenging, not only for our students, but also for our teachers and our parents."

Read said the curriculum should concentrate on respectful, positive relationships.

"Explicit content on sexual attraction and healthy sexual activities needs to stay in a space where kids can really understand what that means and we just feel that it's probably too early at primary education level.

"I'm not naive to think that intermediate children, some of our kaimahi may be sexually active... I have students that are very mature, streetwise, but in the same classroom I have boys or girls running around with their little cars making roads under their desks."

Phil Palfrey from Rotorua's Kaitao Intermediate was also in the group, and said he disagreed slightly with his colleagues. He said children were encountering sexual content at a much younger age than in the past thanks to social media, and schools had a responsibility to educate them.

"We've seen this over and over again - when we find out things that their kids are doing online, their parents are shocked. They just can simply not believe it."

Palfrey said the draft was clearer than the previous guidelines and the content was "not far off" what was appropriate for children to learn.

"A lot of these things we can't leave to parents and we can't leave to outside agencies. I think schools sometimes have a responsibility to make sure kids are armed with all the tools they can for people who are trying to take advantage of them."

However, Palfrey said he was not happy the draft excluded any mention of trans identities.

"It needs to be very sensitive and very caring but people have to understand that people are different."

Step backwards

Meanwhile, a group of University of Otago experts on sexuality education said the draft was a huge step backwards.

Professor Karen Nairn said it was paternalistic, omitted any mention of transgender identities and schools would be better off with the guidelines the government had withdrawn.

"The only glimpse that we have of any acknowledgement about diversity is a mention of intersex young people, and it mentions sexual orientations but even then doesn't spell out the diversity of those orientations," she said.

Nairn said the framework would have a huge impact on young people if it went ahead unchanged.

Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa health promotion director Fiona McNamara said the framework's treatment of gender was the biggest change from the withdrawn guidelines.

"The really big thing that stands out in this framework is that it reduces gender to being two categories - men or women - and that is not the reality of gender, that's not the lived experience of a lot of students who are in schools," she said.

"That's not a good way to be teaching around these topics. It means that non-binary students or transgender students are missing out on really important health information that would be relevant to them. And it means that other students in the class are not hearing those really important messages around respecting other people and respecting diversity."

McNamara said sensitive subjects could be taught in age-appropriate ways, and if anything the framework left some topics too late.

"We're concerned that menstruation and puberty are spoken about too late. So, menstruation is not mentioned until Year 6 and we know that in New Zealand the average age for menstruation is 13 and it's normal to happen as early as nine years old, so this means that some students are going to be menstruating and experiencing puberty before it is spoken about in the classroom, and we need them to be prepared."

Asked if he was happy with the draft framework, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said his party wanted parents to decide what was appropriate.

"We're on the side of the parents and I'm waiting to see what the submissions say," he said. "This is a case where the parents are going to get control - not some self-appointed bureaucrats."

The Ministry of Education expected to release an updated version of the framework in term four.

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