Twenty-first century Britain offers a challenging environment for the growth and development of young people. A particular challenge for parents and other educators is sexuality. In an environment where young people are encouraged, even if only indirectly, to be sexually active, children throughout the United Kingdom often grow up without any moral bearings. Partly as a result of this, relationships, especially between members of the opposite sex, can be fraught with difficulty. There are many causes for the development of such a situation today, but in addressing it, any Personal Relationships, Sex Education and PSHE content must have an adequate anthropology. That is to say, there is a need for a correct understanding of what, or who, the human person is.

The human person is a unity of body and soul. All people thus need to be treated with the utmost respect. It is fundamental to any education regarding Personal Relationships, Sex Education and PSHE that we are not dealing with a commodity but a person, made in the image and likeness of God himself.

Since all people have an inestimable value, they must also be treated with sensitivity and respect. Nothing can ever be taught that might offend against a person’s modesty or sense of privacy.

The task of PSHE, and specifically of Sex Education, is not only informational but, above all, transformational, and it calls for a life of ongoing personal conversion. Such a life entails striving for a properly formed conscience. It also calls for chastity, purity of heart and mind, and the courage to love God the Father’s plan regarding sexuality. All of this must be formed by, and ordered to, the love of God and neighbour as revealed by Jesus Christ crucified.

The Word of God, revealed in Scripture and the Tradition of the Church, must always be borne in mind when educating at any level, but particularly in Personal Relationships, Sex Education and PSHE, since the issues that these subjects cover touch on some of the most basic elements of a person’s existence, namely his or her sexuality. “Value-free” sex education, which avoids or diminishes any moral content, is not permitted in any way.