Debate contribution: Relationships and Sexuality Education and Healthy Young Adult Relationships

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 14 January 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

14 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Opposition Business

Heading

Relationships and Sexuality Education and Healthy Young Adult Relationships

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4736701

Read the official Assembly record

Text

If we want to end gender-based violence for good, we need to prevent it from happening in the first place and from the earliest possible stages. We need to change the cultural attitudes that allow gender-based violence to spread across society as well as in the home, and the best way in which to teach that is in the classroom. Standardised and inclusive RSE should be taught in every single school across the board to help fight harmful stereotypes about gender and to promote relationships based on respect, equality and consent. High-quality RSE can stamp out sexism, misogyny, victim blaming and rape culture. The DUP amendment, if made, will effectively allow pupils to skip, as the Member for South Belfast indicated, essential, life-saving education and learning of life skills. Instead, the reality is that young people are in a postcode lottery when it comes to RSE, which varies widely in quality, quantity and content, if it happens at all. We need to fight back against racist, far-right myths about the role of so-called grooming gangs in child sexual exploitation. Those myths are being peddled by some in the House. The perpetrators of abuse and violence against women are usually males who are white. Child sexual exploitation and violence against women is, in the vast majority of cases, perpetrated by people who are known to the victim and their family. We cannot allow people's justified outrage at violence and child exploitation to be weaponised by far-right agitators, who are out only to make political gain. We also need to examine critically the role of Churches and religious bodies in RSE. Churches should not have a veto over what is taught in schools or in education settings, especially when it comes to teaching young people about consent and healthy relationships. Organisations that have anti-trans and anti-LGBT agendas should not dictate school policy on what is taught either. The DUP talks about the importance of parental choice in education, especially for RSE, but, in practice, its actions show a shocking lack of respect for parental choice when it comes to school integration. The DUP cannot have it both ways. We are also missing an important opportunity by not having a school-wide roll-out of the NSPCC Talk PANTS programme. It is an age-appropriate programme to make young people aware of what abuse can look like in order to protect and safeguard them in cases in which they could be at risk of abuse. Disappointingly, the Department does not have the figures for the number of schools that have availed themselves of that possibly life-saving resource. I urge the Minister to get the data, get the research and ensure that the programme is rolled out in schools right across the North.

456 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 01:20 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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