Parents Rights Alliance (PRA) seeks to uphold the rights of Parents over their children, in particular as regards their education in accordance with their values, as enshrined in the Irish Constitution. The body which produces school Curriculums – the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, the NCCA – proposes to bring an extreme form of sex education into all schools in Ireland starting with the Junior Cycle (first 3 years of Secondary School) SPHE/RSE Curriculum in Sept 2023. This includes teaching:
- transgender ideology: that ‘a boy can become a girl’ and vice versa
- classes on pornography – so that they can ‘critically evaluate’ what is shown in pornography
- an obsessive focus on sexual orientation and sexual identity
- that sex is for pleasure as the only emphasis
Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) has been merged with SPHE – Social, Personal and Health Education, which is a compulsory subject – and this will make it impractical if not impossible for parents to remove their children from SPHE/RSE classes. PRA has been encouraging parents and concerned people to make submissions to the NCCA since 2019 in response to consultations by the NCCA on the Review of Sex Education in 2019, which sets out the approach to be taken in developing the new RSE Curriculums for Primary and Post-Primary schools in Ireland, and to consultation versions of the new RSE Curriculums being developed for Junior Cycle and Senior Cycle (Leaving Cert classes). Draft submissions to the NCCA which were circulated to parents and concerned people are attached here.
Draft Wellbeing Specification for Primary Schools
This is the draft document issued by the NCCA, consultation is open until 7th June.
Document can be viewed HERE
SPHE submissions
Consultation on draft Senior Cycle SPHE/RSE Curriculum –
A document with guidance Points for completing the Submission Template was provided HERE – this has comments to help people fill out the questions in the Submissions Template. It’s important that people personalise their comments where possible (don't just copy and paste directly from the Points).
Letter for School board of management
Parents/Guardians, copy and paste the following letter to send to the Principal and Chairperson of the Board of Management (also include members if possible). In general, the Principal is the secretary of the Board of Management. Click HERE
OPT out letter for RSE subject
click HERE
If you do not recieve a satisfactory response to OptOut1 letter please find a follow up letter HERE
SPHE Textbook for Junior Cycle 1st years for the new RSE Curriculum starting Sept. 2023
Relationship and Sexuality section of one of the new SPHE Textbooks for Junior Cycle First years starting in September 2023 (published by Edco). It covers Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation - see Genderbread Person on p.2 for the new concept of Gender Identity, and p.6 for the types of Sexual Orientation that are described in the Textbook. The Cover Page is also attached. Download link can be found HERE.
What you Can Do?
This Flyer highlights the Gender Identity ideology and other highly sexualised aspects contained in the new Junior Cycle SPHE/RSE Curriculum, and for spreading the word about the new Sex Education Curriculum which most parents are unaware of - the Flyer is suitable for home printing so that copies can be distributed all over Ireland. The new curriculum is set to be introduced to Junior Cycle classes in September 2023 - for first years in Secondary Schools. It contains a summary of key elements of the new Sex Education curriculum, and on the reverse side extracts from some of the definitions in the new Curriculum which reveal its highly sexualised nature - e.g. 'Gender Identity', 'Sex', Sexual activity' etc.
It also includes a short note to TDs that people can sign and send directly to TDs to express their opposition to the new Sex Education Curriculum- the Leaflet contains the relevant information to show TDs the highly sexualised nature of the new Curriculum.
You can download the flyer below attached HERE.
Opt-out Letter to Schools
Template of a letter that Parents can sign and send to a school stating their non-consent to their child(ren) attending any sex education curriculum instruction as set out in letter, and also against referral of children to any service re the sex education topics listed. This is in accordance with Parents rights under the Education Act 1998 as referred to in the letter. Parents can save this letter, enter their own details and print it or email it for sending to a school.
A copy of the Opt-Out letter can be downloaded via the link HERE
Campaigns to stop new Sex Education programmes
PRA has been coordinating campaigns to try and stop the new Junior Cycle SPHE/RSE Curriculum coming into schools this September, or at least remove the most damaging features of the Curriculum. PRA produced a Flyer/Poster which highlights the key new features of the new Sex Education programmes (see here); the reverse side of the Flyer has extracts from the actual Specification for the new Junior Cycle SPHE/RSE. The Flyer can be used to show people the extreme nature of the new Sex Education Curriculum, including to public representatives or school boards etc, as they can see the extracts on the reverse side of the Flyer.
Phone-in campaigns to Minister Norma Foley re the radical Sex Education curriculums were launched following the RTE programme about pornography in schools on 20 th Feb 2023, and this was followed by a phone-in campaign to local TDs and Minister Foley about teaching about Gender Identity/Transgenderism in Primary Schools following statements by the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and the Tanaiste Micheal Martin on 6th March that the Govt. wants teaching about Transgenderism – that a boy can become a girl and vice versa - to take place in Primary Schools.
Join the Campaign against radical Sex Education
Further campaigns are being planned to lobby the Minister for Education and local TDs about the Junior Cycle SPHE/RSE Curriculum – please press the Subscribe’ button below to join Parents Rights Alliance and we will keep you informed of developments.
A number of documents can be found below which provide a background to radical sex education and the content of the proposed new Sex Education Curriculums for schools.
Do you know that the Irish government is planning to impose compulsory and extreme ideology-based sex education on children in all primary and secondary schools?
Would you be happy with your child in primary school being told that they could be either a boy or a girl, regardless of their actual biological sex? That a boy could be a girl trapped in a male body, and vice versa? Probably not, yet this is the kind of sex education (RSE) that is being developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) schools curriculum body following a major review of RSE in schools which was welcomed by the Government in 2019.
RSE resources supporting this approach are already available on the NCCA website for use by teachers before any public consultation about the new RSE curriculum has started. The NCCA’s material is loaded with gender ideology: gender is misrepresented as a social construct; something distinct from the biological sex of a boy or a girl.
For example in the “We All Belong” picture book resource on the RSE section of the NCCA website, there is a full menu of Transgender and LGBTQI+ picture books for primary school children from Junior Infants upwards, e.g. ‘The Boy in the Dress’ and ‘My Princess Boy’. The new RSE resources produced by the NCCA reflect the gender ideology agenda. Another example is the RSE 1 document for Junior Cycle which states “gender refers to the “socially constructed roles…that a society considers appropriate for men and women”- not the biological sex of a boy or a girl.
There is an obsessive focus in the RSE resources on sexual orientation, gender identity, LGBTQI+ issues and other adult themes. Are sexual attributes and preferences the most important aspects of a child’s identity? This unbalanced emphasis on sexual identity and orientation is confusing for children and undermines the ethos of schools and the rights of parents to choose what their children learn and when they learn it. The voices of ordinary parents are almost completely excluded from this discussion which seems to be driven by vested interests such as NGOs pushing gender ideology.
If this sounds unbelievable, you need to read on.
The NCCA approach reflects the highly sexualized World Health Organization ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’ (CSE) approach to RSE, which it apparently regards as ‘best international practice’ in RSE (NCCA draft RSE Review 2019, p 58). The CSE approach was rejected by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on 1 June 2021 because of its radical content, which sexualizes children and mainstreams gender ideology among other things.
As the NCCA is integrating RSE with the existing SPHE (Social, Personal and Health Education) a compulsory subject in schools, this will result in a de facto imposition of a highly sexualised approach to RSE in all schools. Accordingly parents will not be able to remove their children from SPHE classes which will include the radical RSE approach outlined.
LEARN MORE
It is important to understand what is being planned, who is pushing for therse extreme changes and why. This push is NOT coming from parents.
ABOUT US
We are a grassroots organisation of concerned Irish parents and teachers. We have formed this organisation in response to the government’s underhand attempts to rush these radical changes through without an open public discussion.