INTO backs church guidelines on sex education

The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) has "no particular difficulty" with the Catholic church's guidelines on relationship and sexuality education (RSE), the organisation's general secretary said last night. Details of the guidelines were disclosed yesterday.

Sen Joe O'Toole said he believed the RSE controversy had been "much ado about nothing". His organisation's view from the outset was that the programme had to have the full agreement of parents, churches and teachers.

He said the Catholic Church was entitled to satisfy itself as to the appropriateness of the course and he would not have supported a programme which did not have the bishops' support.

The organisation also supported parents who wished to teach their children about RSE at home, as well as teachers who were uncomfortable teaching the programme. They should not be compelled to do so, he said, and the programme was something teachers had to be properly prepared for.

The three-day Department of Education course on RSE had been "very welcome". It had clarified matters but many teachers felt they needed further preparation.

Mr James Casey, of the National Parents Council, also welcomed reports of the bishops' guidelines and the emphasis on the parents' role in the matter. The council welcomed comment from any group which had studied the programme, "as parents are the ones most in the dark about it".

He felt the "ongoing training of parents" on RSE would be desirable. He was "cautiously optimistic" about the RSE programme.

However, the Campaign to Separate church and state believed the bishops' guidelines raised some urgent questions. The group's secretary, Mr David Alvey, said many parents believed there was a basic conflict between sexuality education and religious instruction. "How are their views to be accommodated?" he asked.

He also wondered if RSE would be taught in primary schools as part of religious instruction. If so, how would children opting out of religion class receive RSE instruction? He also wanted to know if boards of management would be forced to apply the bishops' guidelines.

What all the parents' questions pointed to, he said, was that the problem of restructuring the education system to meet the needs of a religiously diverse population had not been addressed. "Should our 3,200 primary schools, apart from a mere 15 multi-denominational schools, be seen as exclusively denominational or as inclusively national?" he asked.

If they are denominational then, he suggested, a parallel system of genuinely national schools would have to be established.