School of Sexuality Education welcomes Tribunal decision

Our comment on ‘Clare Page vs Information Commissioner and School of Sexuality Education’ and preceding events, June 2023.

Following the delivery of one day of consent presentations at Haberdashers’ Hatcham College in September 2021, School of Sexuality Education became involved in a tribunal case relating to our intellectual property. On June 6th 2023 the case was dismissed at tribunal.

Our CEO, Dolly Padalia, says:

We welcome the tribunal's ruling that supports our approach to involving caregivers in their children's relationships and sex education.

At School of Sexuality Education, we believe that caregivers have a right to know what their children are being taught in RSE lessons and actively encourage schools to involve parents. We have never refused a parent request to view our resources, we hold regular caregiver information events, and our workshops take place in front of hundreds of teachers every year.

We have never kept any of our school resources "secret" and will never seek to do this. The judge's ruling allows us to continue to protect our intellectual property whilst providing transparency to caregivers. 

We will continue our important work advocating for young people's right to access comprehensive and LGBTQIA+ inclusive RSE.

A summary of the timeline of events:

Sept 2021: Two School of Sexuality Education facilitators attended Hatcham College to deliver five one-hour presentations on consent. Presentations were attended by teachers and students from various year groups.

Oct 2021: Haberdashers’ Hatcham College informed us that they “have had a request from a parent to see the resources you used for the KS4 session when you visited us”. We provide a bullet-point breakdown of the session content and the list of resources. They then ask for the powerpoint slides, which we also provide.

Nov 2021: Email correspondence with the CEO of Haberdashers’ Academies Trust South confirms that the CEO has met with the parent and showed her the slides on her school laptop during this meeting, but that the parent would also like a copy of the slides. We tell the school that we cannot provide the parent with a copy of the slides, however we are happy to meet with the parent in-person to show her the slides again, and have a member of our team verbally explain our content. (We later find out that this offer was not passed onto the parent by the school.)

December 2021: The parent submits an FOI request to Haberdashers’ Academies Trust South requesting a copy of School of Sexuality Education’s materials held by the Trust.

January 2022: The school does not disclose our materials. The parent requests an internal review of the FOI request she made to the school. 

March 2022: The Trust conducts an internal review and writes to the parent with their response that the ‘College handled the request correctly’ and withhold the requested material.

September 2022: The parent appeals to the ICO. A letter from the ICO to the Academies Trust also asks for another internal review, which was carried out. The ICO upholds the original decision.

November 2022: The parent lodges an appeal to the First Tier Tribunal. 

January 2023: School of Sexuality Education is added as Second Respondents. 

May 2023: School of Sexuality Education attends Tribunal Hearing.

June 2023: Tribunal dismisses appeal.

Details of the full decision by the First-tier Tribunal are available here.

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Any media enquiries should be directed to info@schoolofsexed.org.

Why You Should Invest In Inclusive Work Cultures

It is essential for organisations to understand the importance of creating an inclusive work environment. When employees feel valued and respected, they are not only happier but are also more likely to be productive, engaged, and loyal to their employer.  A diverse and inclusive workforce can lead to increased innovation, creativity and working relationships. 

In this article, we'll explore the benefits of investing in inclusive work cultures and how we can help you create a stronger, happier, and more motivated team.

Defining Intersectionality

Before we get into the benefits of inclusive work cultures, it's important to understand what we mean by intersectionality. Intersectionality is a term coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to recognise that people have multiple social identities that intersect and interact with one another to shape how they are perceived and treated as they move through the world. It acknowledges people’s unique experiences of discrimination and privilege based on their identities (including race, gender, sexuality, disability status).

Understanding intersectionality is crucial in creating an inclusive work culture. It means acknowledging that team members are not defined by a single aspect of their identity, and that their experiences in the workplace are influenced by multiple intersecting aspects of their identity.

For example, a white woman may experience sexism but not racism. A Black woman, however, may also experience sexism, racism (misogynoir), and quite likely, classism all at once.  Similarly, a disabled queer person may experience both ableism and queerphobia and each form of discrimination will inform the other. By understanding intersectionality, you can better understand the experiences of your employees and create a more inclusive work environment.

The Benefits of Inclusive Work Cultures

Done well, investing in inclusive work cultures has a positive impact on employees' mental and emotional wellbeing. When employees feel valued and included, they are more likely to feel satisfied with their jobs and less likely to experience stress and burnout.

Through our workplace training programmes, we offer workshops on Self Care and wellbeing, Creating Inclusive Work Cultures, Sexual Harassment And The Workplace and Understanding Intersectionality. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your company create a more inclusive and effective workplace.

Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships

In September 2021, School of Sexuality Education published Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships. We’d been delivering sex and relationships education workshops in schools for a few years by then, and we wanted to put all of the experience we’d gained in that time to good use. We decided that the best way to do that would be to write a book together – one that could be accessed by teenagers all over the country, no matter who they were or where they were.

It felt important to us to make sure that lots of different perspectives and voices went into the book, not only in terms of expertise (our team’s made up of doctors, teachers, activists and academics) but in terms of life experiences too, and the unique combinations of things that make us us. As such, it was a genuinely collaborative effort, and to be honest, we are pretty proud of it! We think that the end result is a positive, practical, and empowering guide for teenagers which tackles tricky topics in inclusive and non-judgemental ways.

It's made up of nine chapters in total, each of which focuses on a different one of those tricky topics: consent; gender, sexuality and identity; relationships; the body; what is sex?; reproductive health; sexual health; body image; and online life. Across them all, we aim to answer the questions that young people (people of all ages, really!) might not feel confident enough to ask elsewhere.

Alongside the main text of each chapter, we added in a few other sections too. One of these is the ‘myth versus reality’ boxes, which provide accurate information to challenge some of the common ‘myths’ out there about sex and relationships which often come up in the classroom. There are ‘did you know?’ boxes too, which share fun or interesting facts, ‘tips and tricks’ sections, and ‘consider’ boxes which give extra details to help readers to grasp the ‘bigger picture’. Lastly, the chapters also include all kinds of ‘unembarrassable moments’ where different members of the team share anecdotes about personal experiences, to connect the information to some real-life stories, and to prove that we really are unembarrassable!

With such a range of topics and features across the book, it really is jam-packed with information, but readers aren’t expected to take everything in in one go. We designed it so that teenagers can dip in and out of the chapters at their own pace, or even just flick through to the different sections as and when they’re interested in learning more. We’ve popped some notes in the back for teachers and parents too, in case they want to use the book to spark conversations with the young people in their lives – it really is for anyone and everyone.

When we wrote the note for teachers, we did so in the hope that Sex Ed could be used as a resource for planning and teaching, which is why we’re so pleased to already have had several teachers tell us how useful they’ve found it for clarifying information, generating discussion points, and figuring out how best to frame concepts. In light of this praise, we’re now working towards getting at least one copy into every school library in the UK. Not only will this help more teachers, but it will also mean that every teenager in the country will have access to the important information the book contains, and will therefore have the opportunity to better understand themselves, their relationships, and one another.

We’re crowdfunding to send free copies of Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships to UK school libraries. Please click on this link to find out more and to donate.

Click here to purchase a copy of Sex Ed: An Inclusive Teenage Guide to Sex and Relationships.