Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): You are welcome here this afternoon, Professor Schubotz. Thank you for joining us today. It is good to have you here. We look forward to hearing a local perspective, particularly on the youth engagement that you have undertaken on the issue. Thank you also for the helpful literature summary on the issue. It was really comprehensive and is very helpful for the wider inquiry, not just our session today.

I will hand over to you at this stage for an initial presentation, which can be up to 10 minutes. We will then move on to questions and answers. We have a big agenda today, so we will probably move through the question-and-answer session fairly quickly. I therefore ask members to get to their questions and ask you to be as concise as possible in your answers. I will hand over to you. Thank you again for your time.

Professor Dirk Schubotz (Queen's University Belfast): First, Chair, I thank you and the Committee for the opportunity to be here in person. I really appreciate it. The issue is of high importance to what I have done over the past 25 years since I moved to Northern Ireland. Normally, I would speak freely and would be happy to make a 30-minute statement, but, given the importance of the subject, I want to say the right things, so I took the chance to write them down. I timed myself, and my presentation will be about eight minutes. Hopefully, that is acceptable.

As a professor of youth and social policy, I am passionate about young people, as you will appreciate, and about young people's lives and informing policymaking with and for them in order to improve their lives. The starting point of my statement is that children and young people are not just the future. We hear that very often not from just adults but, unfortunately, from children and young people when they say, "We are the future". Young people are the present — right here, right now, and, if I saw correctly, some of them are behind me. For that reason, we need to take them seriously. They are an integral part of our society and what we are doing. It is our job to make sure that what we do affects their lives in a positive way.

People who have already given evidence to the Committee — I took note of what they had said and read their statements — articulated how we need to listen more to children and young people about relationships and sexuality education (RSE). Of course, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) provides a legal and binding framework for us to do that. There is strong evidence that our best chance to meet children's and young people's needs is to take a collaborative and participatory approach to the delivery of RSE that includes all stakeholders, and by that I mean specifically children and young people. We ought to go out of our way to listen to them, hear what their needs are and take them seriously.

I want to step back a little to remind us of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. One of our learnings from the pandemic was that we and, in particular, children and young people paid a difficult and tough price for not taking their concerns seriously at the time. Some of the longest-lasting victims of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it was dealt with are children and young people in terms of their educational outcomes and mental health. We promised that we would learn from that. I reiterate that there is a very strong case that we do that for relationships and sexuality education.

You will have seen that my first job in Northern Ireland when I came here — I first came here quite a long time ago in 1991 but then came to work and live here just before the millennium — was to undertake a study of the sexual attitudes and lifestyles of young people. Such studies did not exist at the time in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was excluded from the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) in the rest of the UK. The main reason why Northern Ireland was excluded was not the lack of will from mainland GB but the fact that there was no fieldwork company willing and able to conduct the fieldwork in Northern Ireland. It was so much of a taboo subject that nobody was willing to talk to adults aged 18-plus about their sexual attitudes and behaviours. That is why I am here and how the study came about.

My experience as a researcher on that study, which was undertaken at the University of Ulster, as it was, was that young people were not afraid to talk about sexual health, sexual behaviours and relationships; in fact, they were longing to do that. There were longing to do it in a very open and trusting way with adults who were willing to listen to them and to their real concerns. The main focus was always relationships; it was not the sexual act. Information about how to have sex was easily accessible in textbooks even then, before the internet was really prominent and before social media came about. That was not the purpose. The reason for it was that they were really lacking a conversation about what a healthy, trusting relationship looks like. At the moment, we do not have that in schools. The modus operandi that we have in schools is one-off sessions that are delivered in an assembly hall where a teacher or an external agency comes in, brings the young people all together, talks at them and then leaves. There is no proper conversation about relationships in most of the schools. We know that there is no shortage of information outside the school space on sex and sexual relationships. The problem with that information is that a lot of it is not trustworthy, and young people recognise that, so they look for information such as that that is delivered in school.

I remind the Committee that, according to our last kids' life and times survey, which covers all P7 children in Northern Ireland, nine in 10 P7 children own a mobile phone. Eighty-four per cent of them access the internet daily. It is not that they do not have access to information and are not accessing it; they do. I do not need to convince you that that information is not helpful or child-friendly in some ways. Children and young people are groomed and targeted online and offline, as we know, and ignorance and lack of knowledge facilitate that grooming and abuse of children and young people. I urge the Committee to encourage the Department to put measures in place to provide trustworthy information in schools. I do not think that the internet replaces a planned and organised curriculum that is delivered by skilled professionals — by that I mean our teachers, who are very highly skilled professionals — in an accessible and trustworthy manner that enables young people to make informed and positive decisions about their intimate relationships in a competent way. Whilst most parents of course want the best for their children, they are not really equipped to deliver that information. Sometimes they do not feel confident and comfortable enough to do that. As I said, the most important aspects of RSE are the relationships, not the sex acts. It is about what is acceptable and what is not. How do I, as a young person, identify a toxic relationship and an abusive relationship? How do I know what is coercive control? How do I seek support and from whom, how and when? Many young people have no opportunity to discuss any of that in school, and, unfortunately, over the past 25 years, in all the research that I have done, nothing has really changed in that. We have to make a real change for young people.

Some of the data that I have collected through the young life and times survey of 16-year-olds, which takes place every year, does not make for pleasant reading. For just last year, we found that half of the 16-year-old women and one in four of the 16-year-old men had experienced at least one form of gender-based violence in the previous 12 months. We are talking about 16-year-olds. Over eight in 10 16-year-olds had neither heard of nor knew what coercive control was, what it means and what it looks like. A particularly harrowing statistic that our survey has reported that relates to the new strategy on violence against women and girls is that half of 16-year-old girls sometimes or always feel unsafe when they are using public transport or other public spaces. The places where young women and young men most often experience gender-based violence are, first, online; secondly, in school; and, thirdly, in public spaces. While we cannot control what happens online, we certainly can take responsibility for what happens in school and in public places, and we should. One way of doing that is to have honest conversations with young people about what relationships look like, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

The last statistic that I want to present to you before I conclude is that, according to our surveys and as was the case in the 'Towards Better Sexual Health' survey, about one in 10 young people, when they first had sex, did so because they felt that they should or because they felt that they were forced to. They certainly articulated that they were not ready for it. Again, it is our job to make the first experience of sex a positive experience.

I am not here to convince you that you should have the brilliant German system or Scandinavian system of sex education. The truth is that they do not exist either. I am here to convince you that we can put in place a decent, appropriate Northern Irish system, and it is our responsibility to do that. People talk about RSE being an ordinary subject and that it should be taught and treated like an ordinary subject. I do not think that that is right. RSE is not an ordinary subject, because it goes to the core of who we are as human beings and of our relationships, our emotions and how we feel. We are human beings and social beings only because of the relationships that we have. From that point of view, I strongly advocate that RSE should probably be the most important subject that we teach in school because it is core to who we are, and we need to take that seriously. It is much easier to teach subjects such as maths and physics because they do not really go to our emotions and the core of who we are.

I will finish by saying that it was interesting to hear the earlier conversation about integrated education. That is one of the other areas that I am really interested in. We have to remember that, in all that, there is always a conversation about the ethos of the school and that RSE has to take place within that ethos. Of course, all those schools are Christian schools. That is their ethos. I remind you that Northern Ireland is a changing place. I heard that clearly when you were talking earlier. For a number of years, the largest group of 16-year-olds in our survey has been the group that has no confessional connections and does not believe in anything. To what extent will a religious ethos meet the needs of those young people? We need to have a conversation about that as well. Thank you very much.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Thank you very much. That has all been really helpful. I want to pick up on your penultimate point as a starter. You said that RSE should not be considered to be an ordinary subject. That is a really interesting perspective. The research that you presented is clear about the fact that young people want to get that material in schools. Quite high percentages of them are saying that school is one of the most important places where they will get some of that information. In that context, teacher confidence to teach that subject is critical. From your research and engagement with young people, and from any other research that you have carried out, given that you said that you do not consider RSE to be an ordinary subject, what is the best way to deliver it? Should all teachers be trained to deliver it effectively, do we need specialist RSE teachers or do we need to bring in expert third parties to deliver it? What is your view on that?

Professor Schubotz: I am repeating what other people have said before me in this room. My view is that it depends. There is no right or wrong. I consider teachers, as much as parents and young people, to be really important stakeholders in all that. What is right in one school may not be right in another. Our research shows that what is important for young people is that they can have those honest conversations. If certain teachers in particular schools are uncomfortable doing it, there is no reason why the school nurse or an external body or peer educator could not come in and deliver it. That is why I said at the start that it is really important that we bring children and young people on board with it and have a conversation with them about the design of RSE, what it looks like and how it is delivered.

Schools are very different in Northern Ireland. We heard that in the earlier conversation. They have very different environments. Some are middle-class, some are very working-class, some are Catholic, some are Protestant and some are really mixed. In the area where I live, in south-east Belfast, we have all that. It depends on the school context, so what is right for one school may not be right for another. However, I know from conversations with teachers that they very much want to support this, some more than others. It is about finding the right person who can teach it. It is does not necessarily have to be the biology teacher, RE teacher or technology teacher; it is about having a conversation about who is the right person to do it.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): That is helpful. In the literature review that you set out, there was a big focus on tackling gender-based violence and RSE's having a really important role in that. We had a really good debate on that in the Chamber yesterday. Your bio says that you have had some involvement with the Gillen education group.

Professor Schubotz: Yes, that is correct.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Given that involvement, can you summarise where you think we are with the Gillen recommendations in the education system in Northern Ireland and what we would need to do to ensure that RSE addresses consent, coercive control, rape myths and all those issues?

Professor Schubotz: I have to be honest with you and say that, over the past 25 years, I have got frustrated with the lack of progress when the evidence on it is clear. We should approach all that positively. Good relationships and sexuality education should be a sex-positive education that embraces the fact that we are sexual beings. Now, if violence against women and girls is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that moves us forward because we recognise that it is unacceptable that young women in particular continue to be at the receiving end of violence, so be it. I am content with that.

The Department of Education gave evidence after the consultation and presented some statistics at the Gillen education review group. We discussed with the voluntary sector organisations that were represented around that table that we cannot play off children's rights to have sex education and health education against parental concerns about that. I think that parents would also recognise that. Every parent wants their child, whether they are a boy or a girl, to be safe. That is really important.

The bottom line should be that, whether you are a girl or a boy, you should be able to move in public spaces and in school without fear. That is our job. If that means that you have to have conversations about relationships — if that is what triggers those conversations, which currently do not take place — and about what is acceptable and what is not, that is fine. Gillen has gone a long way to bring us forward in having those conversations. The recommendations are clear: rape myths, misogyny and other such things that are still way too prevalent in our society need to be addressed. The best way to address them is in schools through relationships and sexuality education.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): Will you be more specific? Given that those recommendations are welcome, how well progressed do you feel that we are here towards enacting them in our schools?

Professor Schubotz: I am involved in research, and I am also a trustee of sexual health charities for young people, so I see that there is a greater demand from schools to bring experts into the school environment to deal with those matters. It could often be through staff training. Common Youth, which I am involved with, provides increasingly more staff training in schools. Gillen has certainly pushed the button in recognising that we need to change something here. There has been some progress, but look at the study on coercive control that I was involved in very recently with Ulster University and Susan Lagdon. I am not sure whether Susan was here. I see you nodding, Chair, to say that she was. If you look at what young people say about relationships, you will see that, when they discuss them, it is usually outside the school context, so there is a very long way to go still.

Mr Sheehan: Thanks for that, professor. I have a couple of interrelated questions. You will be aware that schools here are, in many ways, independent republics.

Professor Schubotz: I understand that.

Mr Sheehan: They decide their own enrolment criteria, what uniforms they want pupils to wear and other aspects of school life that affect children. One of the criticisms that we have heard, particularly from young people, is that the delivery of RSE across schools is inconsistent. In some schools, it is done well, but, in others, it is done poorly or not at all. We have that inconsistency. Related to that is the fact that we have heard from witnesses at this inquiry, particularly those of a faith background, who say that they are happy to deliver an RSE curriculum but want to overlay it with their own moral framework. First of all, do you think that that is possible? Secondly, how do you get around that issue? That, in itself, leads to inconsistency.

Professor Schubotz: That is a really interesting question. I will answer with an anecdote about when I conducted my fieldwork all those years ago. I went to a secondary Catholic school in the north-west of Northern Ireland. I spoke to the RE teacher, who, in that school, was the teacher who was responsible for RSE delivery. In the interview with me, she said that, for the first time, the school had two 15-year-old pregnant girls. In the past, that would have meant that they had to leave the school. They would have been taken out of school and out of sight. The teacher, for the first time, said, "We have to think about whether this is the right thing to do". She came very much from the child-centred approach and thought about what those young girls needed. She said, "As Catholics, we also have to remember that there is forgiveness". They may have not acted in line with how, the moral compass that was delivered in that school suggested, they should — that is, to not have sex before marriage — but she felt that the school could deal with that. There are those who will always say, "We can't do that, because it has to be taught within the ethos of the school", but the ethos of a school is not a fortress; it can change. As long as we think about the needs of the young person whom we are looking at, which is the teachers' responsibility, we can find a way to do both. I am not suggesting or advocating that we replace religious ethos-based sex education with agnostic or atheist relationships and sexuality education, even though I identify as an atheist. That is not what I am proposing.

That is why I said clearly that there is a way to deliver relationships and sexuality education that not only meets the needs and conditions of society in Northern Ireland but puts the children's needs at the centre. For me, at that moment a penny dropped, and I felt that it is possible to deliver relationships and sexuality education in a Catholic ethos in a Catholic sector but still look after the children and young people.

Mr Sheehan: That is interesting. Thank you very much.

Mr Brooks: Thank you for your presentation so far. That was an interesting answer to Pat's question. Reading through some of the papers, I probably took a view that, at times, Christianity was treated throughout — this is not unique to you — as almost inherently negative and something that RSE should help strip from either schools or pupils. I appreciate the answer that you gave.

In your research you quoted Rasmussen about something that we had touched on in the Committee previously, which was some of the discussion-based education on the matter and how it would bring different elements of diversity into a classroom. As someone who wants to maintain those ethoses in schools and schools' ability to have them, do you think that that is a helpful way for us to make sure that all people in the classroom are heard, respected and do not feel isolated?

Professor Schubotz: Yes. I advocate an open discussion about the subject. Can we talk about Christianity and sexuality? Of course we can. Christians are also sexual beings, and they have sexual relationships. I am saying that it should not be prescriptive. We need to recognise that society has changed. Where does that leave a young person in a Christian school who may be transgender, homosexual or may have had sex before they got married? Does it mean that we ignore that? Let us have a conversation about it and what we do in situations like that.

We know that religious ethos-based sex education actually has an effect contradictory to what it wants. I know that you have read evidence about abstinence-based sex education. If there was any evidence at all to say that abstinence improves the sexual health of young people, I would be the first person to advocate it. It does not. There is not a shade of evidence that it helps. The only thing that helps is honest conversations with one another. What is wrong with a disagreement, right?

Mr Brooks: Yes.

Professor Schubotz: There is nothing wrong with it. Let us have a conversation, and I hope that we treat one another respectfully. We can do that in other ways. We need to do that in other areas, and we need to do it in sexuality education as well.

Again, I repeat that the centre of all that has to be the needs of the young person. Saying to them, "You have to wait, you have to do this and you have to something else" is not helping, and it leads to the opposite effect. It actually disables them from dealing with relationships in a healthy way and seeking support if they need to, because they are afraid to.

Mr Brooks: It does not help Churches or, in this context, schools to close their eyes to changes in society and so on —

Professor Schubotz: I completely agree.

Mr Brooks: — but it is about having that understanding and respect for the ethos of schools as well.

I will move to something that is in other parts of your paper. It may have been quoting research, but it talked about schools teaching how to make sexual activity pleasurable and about the autonomy of pupils to make their own decisions. That brings in questions about what that kind of teaching would involve and its age appropriateness. At what stage should the children make their own decisions on this and be outwith the supervision and protection of their parents or responsible adults?

Professor Schubotz: Yes. I will not go round the room and ask you all individually whether you have pleasurable sex. I am saying that this is really important for people's life. We are sexual beings from day 1 of our life, and we cannot ignore that. Biologically, that is what —.

Mr Brooks: I think, more specifically, people would look at something like that and ask what exactly you propose to teach children in schools about how to make sexual activity pleasurable.

Professor Schubotz: I propose teaching them how about their bodies work and about how a lot of that pleasure comes from having healthy and respectful relationships. Of course, there is a wealth of resources on which schools can draw. The Education Authority (EA) has put a lot of resources online on which they can draw. They have to be taught about the purpose of sexual and intimate relationships in our lives as human beings and about how relationships work.

Mr Brooks: You talked about abstinence. There are critiques of abstinence-based RSE. I understand them, having read them. I presume that, at some level, teaching abstinence to those of a young age is surely appropriate. At what age should that stop?

Professor Schubotz: We know that young people delaying the first time that they have sex until they feel ready is one of the most important sexual health outcomes. I am not advocating not abstaining — in fact, if anything, we should do that — but we can do that only by helping young people understand how relationships work, how to say no, how to say yes when they are ready to say yes and how to negotiate doing that. It is absolutely not appropriate to have a sexual relationship with another child when in P7 or something like that. We need, however, to start to talk about sexual relationships when —.

Mr Brooks: Talking about taking a sex-positive approach to things and pushing back against abstinence-based RSE, I think that the age at which not just you but others propose to start that will be a key consideration for parents and for people who are looking at what is appropriate to be taught in schools.

Professor Schubotz: There is a reason that the age of sexual consent in Northern Ireland is 16. We probably have an understanding that that is a good age at which we can have those conversations.

Mr Brooks: I imagine that a lot of the people who have come before the Committee are advocating that type of education to be started at much earlier than 16, so it is a challenge to find the line.

Professor Schubotz: Absolutely. The education should start earlier, but when is the right time to start talking about it, and why is that the right time? It is because young people's understanding of sex is still developing, as are their emotions. We know that there are children much younger than 16 who are being subjected to sexual abuse. Education helps children recognise when a touch or a hug is appropriate or not appropriate and from whom it is appropriate.

Mr Brooks: We have heard from the NSPCC about that and about violence against women and girls. I want to make it clear that, although there are different views on RSE around the table, there are areas of commonality. I agree with that. Thank you for your answers.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): We need to keep revisiting the fact that all of this should be viewed through a lens of age-appropriateness. I do not think that there has been any contributor who has not emphasised that point. Any material needs to be age-appropriate. Are there any other questions?

Ms Hunter: Thank you for being here today. It is important that we hear directly from young people, and we could hear the emphasis that you placed on their voices being included. I am looking at some of the stuff in our pack. It is really interesting. It states that males are less likely to learn about the likes of periods, contraception and pregnancy. That is crazy when you think about the interplay of our relationships throughout our lifetime and about the fact that men will be around women and have relationships with them, yet they will not have received the fundamental aspects of education. That is not news to you, I am sure.

I have one quick question off the back of that. We have generations — my generation and so many before it — who did not get adequate, comprehensive and fact-based RSE. Do higher education and further education have a role to play? Could consent classes be provided at freshers' week, for instance? I know that there is an effective feminist society at Queen's; indeed, I have spoken to it about this matter. What are your beliefs about that?

Professor Schubotz: I completely and utterly agree with you; in fact, was involved in setting up the report-and-support scheme at Queen's. I supported students when I took up my research post at the university. I also had an advisory role. I was involved with the students' union to set up bystander training, which is now delivered for everyone who lives in halls of residence. It is not as if students are finished with all of that when they turn 18.

There is something that I want to say, and I have been encouraged by your comments to say it. I do not understand why we have people of your generation who did not have relationships and sexuality education and are now decision-makers and now think that that was a good idea and want to keep it that way for their own children. I do not understand that. I agree that there are big gaps. Higher education has a role to play. Freshers' week is the prime week for sexual abuse and assaults taking place in universities. There have been very public cases of that in England, including in Durham, in the first week of term. Queen's students' union is very aware of the issue and has put resources in place to deal with the problem, and it is the same at Ulster University. It is why students staying in halls of residence have training on behaviour and access to the report-and-support scheme. There are also helplines available, should they have such an experience.

Ms Hunter: Your comments underscore the need for RSE to provide an understanding of where to go to get advice. That answers my question. Thank you.

Professor Schubotz: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): There are no other indications from members, so that brings our evidence session to a close. Thank you for your time.

Professor Schubotz: Good luck with the decision-making.

The Chairperson (Mr Mathison): All of your evidence will be fed into the final report. Thank you.