My story:

This September* the Department for Education is introducing mandatory Relationship Education in primary schools, and Relationship and Sex Education in secondary schools - parents will have no right to withdraw their children from these classes. The Department has also said results of 'parental engagement' can just be set aside! When I heard this, my alarm bells went off. 

I believe strongly in the rights and the duty of parents to direct the moral and ethical upbringing of their own children in the most fundamental matters of belief, sex and relationships. If we consider that a school is teaching things which puts our children in a position of conflict and confusion, we should be able to protect our children from it. This is the principle which justly allows parents to withdraw their children from Sex Education in primary schools or from religious worship. It means we get a say - it is our right.

Many schools are doing and will do RSE well. There is a need to affirm children within complex family structures, help them understand their changing bodies as they grow and to encourage them in happy, healthy and lasting relationships, all in a sensitive and age-appropriate way.

What will your school teach? It's yet another lottery!

I say this because, whilst working in education, despite seeing many good examples, I have become very concerned about the material produced by some ideological activist groups for RSE teacher training and for speakers visiting schools. Some of it contains graphic content and also material about 'gender identity'. Some of this content is even delivered in cartoon videos, giving children the impression that it is no different from watching Peppa Pig!

We can't (most of us) choose where our children go to school. We can't choose (thanks, DfE!) what they get taught in RSE. So shouldn't we have the right to withdraw them if we wish?

One clear example of the dire need for rights of withdrawal came from an 'RSE Early Adopter School', where we soon found out what the Government reforms might mean in practice. Protests began in Birmingham about the highly sexualised content given to primary school children. The Government said they would ignore the parents, and indeed did, and the local authority secured injunctions against the parents. The children continued to receive the very education that the parents say is against their ethical and religious viewpoint.

What is this Judicial Review about? 

• It's about giving parents a way to ensure that their children are not subject to lessons that as parents we feel are subverting our primary educational role as parents.
• It's about safeguarding the innocence of the young hearts and minds of our children.
• Its about protecting parental rights so we don't feel our only recourse is to protest outside schools.
• It's about ensuring schools and teachers are not faced with unhappy and unpleasant protests.
• It's about ensuring our children are educated but not indoctrinated.

I think the only way to achieve this is for parents to have the right to withdraw children from the new RSE programme, which is being rolled out throughout the country on 1st September 2020*.

In other circumstances I wouldn't have touched the idea of a lawsuit with a bargepole, but this matter is too important to be ignored. So I have joined a new group called the Let Kids Be Kids Coalition. I am a Christian but the Let Kids be Kids Coalition is open to those of all faiths and none, so please join us. We need your help and support.

We need funds to go to Court for a Judicial Review and I will be instructing the renowned human rights barrister Paul Diamond, who will be holding funds in Shieldpay - an escrow account. 

Time is short: and we must raise funds for Court in August. 

For more information please visit:

• Website: https://letkidsbekidscoalition.org 
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LKBKC 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LkbkC

Please give generously, and help us protect our children, and our children's children.

*For some schools which haven't yet put together their RSE programme there is a short moratorium because of Covid19 until summer 2021 but this won't affect most schools.