| SPOTLIGHT |
A school need not disclose to a parent the content of a sex education lesson or identify those who delivered it, a ruling by the First-Tier Tribunal General Regulatory Chamber (Information Rights) has said.
Parent Clare Page brought the case against the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the School of Sexuality Education, which had delivered the lesson at the Haberdasher’s Hatcham College.
Ms Page had her request for information mostly rejected by the school and again at an internal review and by the ICO, which held the school was entitled to rely on section 40(2) and section 41 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and that it did not hold some of the requested information.
In September 2021 staff of the School of Sexuality Education (SSE) taught a relationships and sex education lesson on consent to a class, including Ms Page’s daughter.
Ms Page then sought copies of the slides used in that lesson and the names of those who delivered it.
Tribunal Judge Sophie Buckley, who sat with tribunal members Dave Sivers and Jo Murphy, noted it could determine only if an exemption applied and so was “considering disclosure of one particular lesson plan to the world, not to a particular parent”.
The ICO concluded SSE had the right to exploit its intellectual property for commercial gain and that making the information public would take away that right.
Fewer schools would be likely to pay SSE to deliver the same lesson if the material was readily available for free and the ICO concluded that if that happened SSE would find it difficult to enforce any remaining intellectual property rights.
The ICO noted the trust had undertaken to use the material only for relevant lessons and not to retain it.
Parents have a right to decide what is taught to their child in relationship and sex education, and the ICO noted hose rights “cannot be exercised in a meaningful way without parents being aware of the subject matter their children are likely to be taught”.
But the commissioner concluded unrestricted disclosure was not a proportionate or necessary means of achieving any legitimate interest in keeping parents informed”.
Giving its judgment, the tribunal said it did not accept that parents’ right to withdraw their child from sex education classes meant there was any duty on a school to provide them with copies of curriculum materials or, for example, detailed lesson plans.
“In any event, we find that it is not necessary or proper to imply a statutory duty to provide parents with sufficient information so as to enable them to make a meaningful decision as to whether to action their right under s.405 of the EA 1996 to ‘wholly or partly’ withdraw their child from sex education classes,” the tribunal said.
“In the light of the words used, their context and the purpose of the legislation, we do not accept that Parliament must have meant there to be a statutory duty to provide sufficient information. The purpose of the legislation can as well be achieved by schools acting properly to provide sufficient information to parents in accordance with the statutory guidance.”
Tribunal members noted the fact that SSE’s safeguarding policy did not appear on its website “does not, in itself, suggest to us that the usual policies will not have been followed”. They said details of facilitators and their biographies appeared on SoSE’s website at the relevant time.
“We do not accept that Ms Page is unable to make a complaint if she does not know the names of the individual facilitators,” the tribunal said.
If she had concerns about the lesson she could raise these and the name of the facilitator would be available to those determining the complaint.
The tribunal added: “We do not accept that disclosure of the names of the facilitators who taught this individual session to the world is reasonably necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests.”
