Teaching Teachers How to Teach Sex Ed with Alison Wiggins | Transcript
CW: brief mention of suicide, mentions of sexual harassment and violence
Find the episode shownotes here!
Hannah Witton
Hi everyone. Welcome back to Doing It, the sex and relationships podcast where sex has never been so nerdy, with me, your host, Hannah Witton. In this week's episode I am joined by Alison Wiggins. Alison is the subjects leader for the PGCE in Social Sciences and Psychology programmes at the Institute of Education at UCL, University College London. And PGCE is the certificate postgraduate study to become a teacher. Alison is currently working in collaboration with the School of Sexuality Education to develop an RSE programme for PGCE students across the UK, which essentially means she is teaching teachers how to teach about sex, and we talk about RSE a lot in this episode, which stands for Relationships and Sex Education. Alison has been teaching for the last 14 years and is a former psychology and sociology teacher in a London secondary school so she is no stranger to being a teacher in schools herself. She is drawing on all her experience working with secondary school students, her specialism in education and social research, as well as her anti racism and feminist work to train teachers and revolutionise how we teach sex ed in schools. I first came across Alison when she was speaking on a panel at an event hosted by the School of Sex Ed and as you know, I am so passionate about sex education and changing the way young people are taught and think about sex and relationships and so I couldn't wait to talk with Alison on the podcast all about her work.
I absolutely loved our chat, Alison is clearly making such an important impact in the world of sex education and we had a lot of interesting discussions. We spoke about how Alison works with teachers to remove their own personal experiences and beliefs around sex when working with students, and the importance of listening to young people and providing what they themselves tell us that they need. We talk about why we should centre pleasure in sex education, not just safety, and uphold it as an important and valid reason behind why people have sex. Alison spoke about the crossover of anti racism work and sex education, shared why she believes primary school isn't too early to talk about gender roles, and why she tells teachers to watch the Netflix show Sex Education as part of their homework. We also discussed how to make a more LGBTQ+ inclusive space in RSE for both students and teachers, and why the RSE you deliver in your school won't have any impact unless the culture of your school as a whole reflects the values of equality and safety that you are teaching. I loved talking with Alison about something that we are both so passionate about. And I came away feeling more hope for young people knowing that Alison is doing all of this great work teaching teachers how to teach about sex.
Please note, we do briefly mention suicide in our chat so please take care before listening.
As usual, you can find more info and links to everything we talked about in this episode in the show notes over at doingitpodcast.co.uk and please let us know we think over on our Twitter or Instagram which is @doingitpodcast. If you like this episode, please give us a rating and review over on iTunes and Spotify. It's really appreciated. And without further ado, here is my conversation with Alison Wiggins.
Hannah Witton
Alison, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to dive into all of this like sex ed, teacher, school stuff. It's like a world I'm fascinated by.
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, I'm super excited. And I think this is really, really important.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, absolutely. And I think just can we start off with like, what is currently included in teacher training when it comes to sex ed, and what isn't? Like what are teachers being taught?
Alison Wiggins
That thoroughly depends on where you are. So it depends on how you're being trained to be a teacher. So there are two routes into teaching. You can take a school direct route, or you can take the university, like, PGCE route. So if you're doing a school direct one where you're training and you're mostly based in school, the quality of your RSE and PSHE training will be determined by the school itself, so by the individual institution. If you are learning to teach by a PGCE, which most people who train to teach are, that, again, will be determined solely by the institution itself and the subjects that you're doing. So with primary teaching, I think everybody has some level of exposure to it in terms of their training. And with secondary, it really depends on your subject. So the degree to which you're taught about relationships and sex education if you're a science teacher, is wholly different to if you are a maths or an art teacher, for example. And that's something that we're working really hard to try and change because this kind of work, I think it's assumed that everybody's just automatically good at it because they're an adult.
Hannah Witton
Yeah!
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, and that's just not it! And we know that, and you know that, of course. We know that that's not at all the case, and for young people to get the quality, and kind of inclusive and sex positive training that we think is really important, they need to - teachers need to be trained, they need to be confident, they need to have good subject knowledge, and they need to be, like unembarrassable and happy to teach it. And that is what we're really working towards. But we're kind of right at the beginning of that, because only last year, did it become statutory for all schools to teach it and therefore, all teachers to be involved in the teaching and learning of the topic.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And I think that's like a great summary of, like, what teachers need to be like confident, unembarrassable, but also like knowledgeable in the subject area. So like, where are you starting with that? And kind of like, what, what kinds of things can teachers do to identify and acknowledge their own, like, personal feelings around sex and relationships? Because surely, that's a huge part of it, as well, because we're all bringing all of our own, like, ideas and values around it.
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely. So you're bringing your own stuff. So in the same way that you teach in a way that acknowledges your experience of being taught. So lots of people, when they come into teaching, they come into it, and they say, very pointedly, "I want to be the teacher that I never had." Right? So they want to change things. They want to address all the things that they experienced, and make sure that the young people in front of them don't experience it, or they want to emulate somebody who was really amazing. So whenever I - like I do the interviews for my course, I don't think I've ever had a single person who isn't involved or interested in teaching who didn't have an amazing teacher that really, really directed or changed the course of their life. So they like, "This, you know, this teacher did this amazing thing for me. And now I want to just go on, and then you know, change the world in the same way that they helped to change things for me." So you bring with that - like, when you come into teaching, you bring that experience with you. good or bad. And you also bring to RSE teaching all of your experiences. And I think that what that means is you have to make a real effort to teach in a way that isn't necessarily objective, but is removed from the lens of your own experience. So you need to teach it as if it is an academic subject that needs to be taught properly, not as if it's a common sense, everybody kind of knows this.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, you don't get into adulthood unscathed by the relationships and sex education experience that you've had. So you need to make a real effort not to bring that into the classroom, because it doesn't allow you to give the students what they need. It focuses more on where you are and how comfortable you are. And if you're not comfortable, then you're not going to teach well. I think.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Where do you see the most resistance with teachers when you're- and schools as well, in terms of like, "Hey, this is an important subject matter"? Like, what's that pushback? Like if -
Alison Wiggins
Oh, that's a lot. Okay. So we get a lot of pushback about inclusive language, right. So people have a real issue with 'people who menstruate' and 'people with penises' and 'people who get pregnant', right? People have a real, "I can't say that, that just doesn't roll off the tongue. I don't feel comfortable doing that." I have a lot of that. You know, there's so many other things that you have to remember in teaching - remembering to change your language is something people have a real issue with. So I kind of bring that back and move away from the relationships and sex education side of it, and maybe speak specifically about points of their identity that they would feel uncomfortable people using particular words for, and think how that would feel and try to like build on their own empathy.
Alison Wiggins
So we get pushback about that we get pushback about anything to do with nudes, or phones, or anything to do with -
Hannah Witton
So, technology?
Alison Wiggins
Technology in general teachers are like, "Nope." Because they again - and I'm going to generalise here. So for all the teachers out there, please correct me or recognise that I'm not - I am aware that this is not everyone's experience. But lots of teachers have an online presence that is very separate from their teacher presence in the classroom. So they have different tenets of their identity that they are willing to show in different places. Young people don't usually have that. They've got like, "This is me, and this is what I'm doing." They don't, they're not going to like, curate it and be like, "This is who I am in this group" and necessarily "this is who I am in a different group." It's all out there. And they engage with it in a way that lots of older adults don't necessarily do. So they find the whole idea of, for example, having relationships wholly online, they're like, "Oh, that's stupid if you've never met the person." Because they've never - that's not something they've experienced. So Are they then through it because of their own views about it, find it very difficult to kind of teach it in a way that's empowering, and can use quite like shaming language and like stigmatising language and make the students feel like they're doing something wrong. So we get a lot of pushback about that.
Alison Wiggins
We get a lot of pushback about issues to do with sexual harassment, sexual violence, you know. You know, people are starting to realise that "educate your son" is part of this conversation. But I feel like we're right at the beginning of it, because, you know, young women are still getting - and young men and gender nonconforming people - are still getting shamed when something happens to them. So research that the School of Sexuality Education has done has shown that when somebody is sexually harassed online, for example, only about - well, less than 2% of them will ever tell their teachers about it.
Hannah Witton
Right.
Alison Wiggins
Because the students know that if they are harassed online for something that they did, or were part of -
Hannah Witton
Even if it's by somebody else, who they go to school with?
Alison Wiggins
Yes, because they see it as they're the ones that are going to get in trouble, because they're the ones bringing it to the teacher's attention.
Hannah Witton
Right.
Alison Wiggins
So rather than them trusting that the perpetrator is going to be addressed, they worry about themselves. And I think that feeds into what we know about kind of rape culture and like victim blaming more widely in society. So they don't tell their parents, they don't tell their teachers, therefore they kind of just deal with it. And that is something that I don't think is okay.
Hannah Witton
No.
Alison Wiggins
So if you were being bullied in school, some children would come forward and kind of talk about it. But if you're being bullied online, and in anything to do with, like, kind of sex and relationships, they are so much less willing to do it because teachers are, they say sometimes visibly uncomfortable, even with the conversation let alone with kind of working together for a solution.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. What are some of the like, more impactful, like ways that have worked in terms of like engaging teachers and schools on these topics.
Alison Wiggins
So I think what I sometimes get - because I do some like bespoke training, so I do lots of work in university, but schools sometimes come in and say, you know, "It's not just training teachers that need to hear this, like teachers who are in the field really need to know this." Particularly when it became statutory. Because when it became statutory, it becames every everybody's responsibility. So people who maybe had wriggled out of it, up until that point, had no choice, like, they had to get get involved in it. It's often in schools taught through tutor times: most full time teachers are tutors and part time teachers are tutors, which means they have to do it. And they don't necessarily want to, but it's part of their kind of statutory responsibilities. So what I get brought into school to do is to create that buy in. And what that means is schools want teachers to learn and to understand the impact of this work on their young people moving forward to try and get them - yeah.
Hannah Witton
Like the real life impact that it's gonna have on these people.
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely, and to connect it to teaching and learning. So that's something that I do about - like, think about your own experience. So I always kind of take it back to the self. So think about your own experience at school. What didn't you learn in relationships and sex education? I always start my sessions with like "Give us a funny story about what happened to you in sex ed". And some of them are so horrendous. And we can laugh about it now as adults, but when you were a young person sat in front of somebody saying some of these things, it's, you know, it's a wonder that you, you know, were able to function and kind of carry on with your life safely. I remember someone saying to me that, oh, I can't even remember now it's something about, you know, it's that Mean Girls, it's like, "If you have sex, you will get pregnant and you will die." Like, literally that. And it wasn't that long ago. And then my own experiences - before I understood about like, the human reproductive system, I was shown a real life placenta. So a nurse - I think she must have been a nurse - when I was in year eight, brought in a placenta.
Hannah Witton
Where'd she get it from?!
Alison Wiggins
She was also a midwife. I can't - now I can't remember if it was hers or not, I don't think it was. But it was like a real - it was an actual placenta. She gave us all gloves and were were like playing with the placenta. With somebody's actual placenta. The umbilical cord was still attached. Everything. And then that was the end of the lesson.
Hannah Witton
No context.
Alison Wiggins
No. No context, no information. Just this really weird, quite, like, scary experience.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, it's an organ! Like, you know. That's. Wow. Do you know if they're still showing that birth video because I got showed that when I was 13? Is that still being rolled out?
Alison Wiggins
Yeah. So there's a few. Generally the videos that are shown - again, sometimes it deflects from the actual like involvement in the teaching and learning. So if you work on a video and the students watch a video they're like, "Okay, we've done it now."
Hannah Witton
"Job done. Tick."
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, "Job done." So it's either that one where they're like the cartoon characters and mummy and daddy getting into - you know, going to have cuddles or whatever, or it's animals. So that's the other thing. There's like cartoons with like rabbits and things like that. And that is used to try and explain, yeah, relationships and sex. It's very, very odd, some of the approaches.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. We're really scared of like being honest and explicit with young people.
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely. Because it's this innocence. It's this assumption of innocence. That if we talk to them about this stuff, we're somehow taking away their childlikeness and their innocence, and you need to see it more as something that is about their safety and their wellbeing.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Alison Wiggins
So what I do when I do this buy in work, I talk about, like, how different would your life have been, if you understood something like consent when you were 12? You know, so thinking about that - so think about how bad your sex ed was, why it's then important that the next generation don't get such bad sex ed, and what the consequences are if they don't get it. So thinking about - like, showing them statistics about kind of menstrual health, showing them statistics about sexual violence and sexual assault, shoving them statistics about like, just general health things, because RSE and relationships and sex education comes under the umbrella of PSHE. I try to get the teachers to understand is that their responsibility is to make these young people like empowered, good humans, not necessarily experts in science, maths, art, whatever it is You know, so try and help them. Because if we don't do it, the expectation that somehow by osmosis, it's just going to happen to them, I think is wrong. Like we have to explicitly - if we want them to be like empathetic, understanding, like, good citizens, we have to invest in all of those things that make them like that.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. For sure.
Alison Wiggins
So yeah, whenever I go to conferences about "Oh, you know, we need young people to be resilient." Okay, well, what are we doing to help them be resilient? How does one become resilient? You know? They think it happens by accident. And I think it needs to be very deliberate and very focused - not on what we think the young people need: what they have told us that they need that we then have to find a way to provide for them.
Hannah Witton
Unfortunately, like, building resilience is something that can happen by accident, but you never like want it to. For however many people go through some kind of hardships and come out a more resilient person, you have like, the same amount of people or maybe more people who go through a hardship and come out of it like - I don't have like a proper word here, because the first word that came to my head was broken, but those people obviously aren't broken. But just like, really like, scarred by that, maybe.
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, or just not okay. There might be just parts of them that are just - I always say that, like, "We just want our kids to be okay."
Hannah Witton
I just want them to be okay!
Alison Wiggins
I just want them to be okay. And when you're young, and you're going through puberty, and you're struggling to kind of find your own way, find your identity, be who you are, you need somebody to remind you that that's okay. That that's like a process that everyone has to go through and who you feel like you are now, what you like now, might not necessarily be, you know, what's gonna happen in 10 years. And that's absolutely okay. And what I tried to do through when I'm teaching is to just reinforce that there's no such thing as one normal. There's not a generic normal, there's just normal for me, and normal for you. And those two things might be different, and that's okay. But to help them to recognise when something doesn't feel right, it probably isn't. And therefore, you need to get some support or some information.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. On the, like, getting schools and teachers to buy into it through the kind of like health and safety lens. Is there any part of you that kind of feels like that's maybe giving into more kind of like conservative ideology because that's maybe what works in a more conservative society? Instead of being like, "But it's also like a good thing because of things like pleasure and sexual liberation."
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely. And that's the - pointedly the thing that is missing from the guidance. And one of the first things you'll get asked when you start teaching sex and relationships education is, you know, they'll ask you about something and they'll be like, "Why? Why would you go through all of this? Why - you gotta go to the GP, gotta get an STI test, got to get this, gotta get this, gotta have all these conversations, got to do this, got to do this. Why?" And the answer is pleasure.
Hannah Witton
Because it feels good!
Alison Wiggins
Because it feels amazing, and you're just having a lovely time. And that's missing from the guidance. So unless you have the confidence, and the, you know, that unembarrassableness and that openness with the students to help them to understand that - that's something they need to know because otherwise sex in from that lens of a kind of wellbeing and safety and health is viewed as something that is quite scary. And you know, if you combine that with maybe what they're getting from pornography, there are some very confused messages kind of being sent. Quite contradictory message messages as well. So I do think, yeah, that lens, and you know, making sure that you are happy with everything that is happening to you and that your decisions are informed and they're being made at a time that's right for you - I just, I just think that's really important. And, yeah, as a teacher, you have to interpret the guidance rather than deliver it as is because it's not perfect. And it's the first iteration of it ever being statutory. You gotta remember, people have been advocating for statutory sex ed for the last probably 30 years. So the fact that we kind of have it now - we're only one year in, and I'm hopeful that it will develop in the future. And once we've got those foundations - because now it's being taught in primary as well - once we've got those foundations, then as the young people kind of go up in terms of their year groups, we'll get younger people who are just much more aware. And then we can take it to the next level and be more nuanced and go into more depth and detail about things. But at the moment, we're right at page one, I think.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And actually speaking of the guidance - so the guidance does have a bit in it about being LGBTQ+ inclusive in RSE, and it just made me think about the fact that there are probably like some older teachers who were trained and teaching under Section 28 and are now like, having gone through, like, after that was repealed, and now with like, "Okay, now you have to be LGBTQ+ inclusive." And like, I don't know, if you've like, met any teachers, and kind of like, what that kind of has been like for them. And then also, I think we often forget that, like, teachers can be LGBT, as well. And so like, how can schools kind of create that kind of safe environment for their students who may be queer, but then also like their teachers, as well?
Alison Wiggins
That's a really interesting point. And yeah, I haven't probably spoken in depth with anybody who's been through the process. But there are lots and lots of people who are acutely aware of this, and therefore, you know, it is a bit of like unlearning that they need to do to try and get them to a place where they feel comfortable with it. Now, this the idea of like the inclusivity of LGBTQIA communities and people in lots of schools is done as an add on, like, it's a separate lesson. "And then there are these people who do these kind of things." Whereas we advocate for an inclusive approach kind of all the way through and there are lots of ways to do that. So yeah, it's something that people are just getting their head around. I still do training, where sometimes I need to explain what those terms actually mean. And again, it's this assumption that we're all on the same page. And we're really, really not. And I've got to sometimes really take it back and remember that I'm quite - like, I've had lots of experience, and I do this as a job. So my knowledge and understanding of these concepts is is really different to other people's. And I try to never assume knowledge, I just try to make everything really explicit to try and make sure we're all kind of speaking the same language. So the inclusiveness aspect of it, I think is a massive step forward. It's not enough, but it's getting there. And in terms of what that does for the queer communities inside school, in terms of teaching staff and in terms of students, I think it helps them to be seen a little bit more. And I think it has - for the queer educators that I know - it's just given them an opportunity to be more vocal, to be more involved, and to make sure that the people who are planning the curriculum for RSE are getting it right. And they feel a bit more comfortable coming forward and being like, "Okay, I know a bit about this. Let's talk about how we do this properly."
Hannah Witton
Yeah, that's a really good point. Are schools still separating students by gender? Is that - or is that phased out?
Alison Wiggins
Like no, no, they're still doing that?
Hannah Witton
Oh, no!
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, they shouldn't be but unfortunately, they are. You know, what I love is I use Sex Education on Netflix, a lot to try and illustrate to teachers.
Hannah Witton
Oh my god, that was painful to watch.
Alison Wiggins
I know, but I think it really exemplifies kind of what's wrong with that approach.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and you have two non binary students as well, who were like, "Where do we go?"
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, they were just like, "Hello?" And then were completely dismissed. So yeah, I think obviously, it's quite an extreme version of it. But I often set like watching Sex Education on Netflix as homework for my teachers once I finish my session, because I'm like, "If you want to know more, and you want to, you know, in some ways, learn how not to do it, then kind of watch that and think about it." But I think young people are actually becoming more vocal in the sense that they understand that that's not the right approach.
So when, yeah, and because it's taught this way now, so it's not often taught as a standard lesson, it might be taught in tutor time - you can't separate kids out in tutor time because there's not enough teachers to do that. So hopefully it won't be like when I was at school, and we had the period talk, I was ill. So I missed the period talk. There was just one in the whole time I was there. And so I missed it, because I wasn't very well. And all the girls were like, "Oh, you missed it." And I was like, "What did I miss?" And they were like, "Don't know." So I had to kind of - luckily, you know, I was able to talk to my mum about stuff like that. But I know that loads of people can't. And I think, you know, the steps that we've had, like, through, like, all the activism that young women or women have been working towards, in terms of addressing menstrual literacy, period poverty, and all the period shaming, I think is really kind of making that - making people more aware of why that's important. And young people are just not going to stand for it. Like, I genuinely think that if they tried to do that in lots of schools that young people just be like, "No. This is not happening."
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, I was actually gonna ask about that in terms of like, do you think it's important for like the young people themselves to like, be, like, involved in the process of like, what gets covered in their RSE lessons?
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely.
Hannah Witton
And how do you - how do you go about centering them in that? And how do you get the schools on board to figure out how they do that and involve young people in that process?
Alison Wiggins
So I think that whenever you are - whenever schools are planning a curriculum that's supposed to be based around giving young people what it is that they need to be able to move forward into adulthood more positively, you have to talk to young people, because the assumptions that teachers make about what young people need are wholly inaccurate in lots of cases. And we always advocate for a whole school approach that is informed by all the stakeholders. So you've also got involved the community, so you don't get lots of parents backlash, you've involved all the different year groups and the different groups that are represented so that if there is an LGBTQA group, if there is a group around kind of addressing issues of race and racism, if there is one about gender equity or a feminist club, like bring all of those people into the conversations. And schools now have a responsibility to incorporate student voice into their kind of governance and organisation. So most schools are quite good at like at least having representatives from the school council and like talking to them about it. Unfortunately, often, it's a, "This is what we're doing. Thanks." But sometimes it's a "What do you think? Is there anything else that needs to be covered?" And schools, you know, the schools that are very good at this and have been doing this from, you know, well before it became statutory, have a rolling PSHE and RSE curriculum which is responsive to the needs of students, so if you know, something is, you know, happening in a particular group, or, you know - unfortunately, PSHE is sometimes used to address like things that are going on in school in terms of incidents that have happened, or, you know, my school, one of our teachers took their own life. So we had to help the students to deal with that, through that that, like, in that space, actually. So it's kind of a really good opportunity to involve the students in the things that they think they need.
Hannah Witton
What's relevant to them in their lives.
Alison Wiggins
What's relevant. Exactly. And often, like, teachers are - they want to teach things too late. So whenever I talk to the people about porn literacy, they're like, "Oh, yeah, year 11." And I'm like, "No."
Hannah Witton
Too late!
Alison Wiggins
Too late. Far too late. So yeah, I think that kind of those kinds of conversations can be really powerful. And missing that voice or that input I think is quite detrimental to schools. And the more confident they become with a curriculum, and the more time they're willing to dedicate to that kind of dialogue, I think, can only benefit the students and the teachers kind of move forward.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And you mentioned like, within all the different clubs, like, maybe there's like an anti racism club and stuff. And I was just wondering, like, how you think anti racism work and relationships and sex education and, like gender equity, like how, how do you - what is it like important to include all of those things together? Then also, like, how do you include anti racism work into RSE?
Alison Wiggins
So I think it's about addressing stereotypes and misconceptions and kind of statistical patterns that we see that we hope are being addressed in those kind of lessons. I think they're inextricable from each other, if you're talking about justice and informing a population to activism and to making sure that they are addressing the things that they know are important. And I think that anti racist and like work that's been going on since sign of kind of summer of 2020, has really elevated the idea of justice. And that justice is - it comes in many forms, but actually it starts with being empowered with education.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Alison Wiggins
And then obviously, as people become more aligned to the, you know, the reasons why it's important that all of those voices are heard. in lots of different spaces, then you can start to get into the kind of work that Decolonizing Contraception are doing. So where they're bringing together like all of those things to show the historical interconnections between them, but also how those play out in the real world. And recognising that the intersections of people's identity have profound effects on the way that they navigate all of these different places and spaces.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and like access sexual health care. And yeah, and relationships and all of those kinds of things.
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely. Yeah. And I remember speaking to a student teacher who wore a hijab, and said how impossible it was for her to get emergency contraception, because of the assumptions that people made about her because she was Muslim. And things like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Another thing that just came to mind as well, like, when talking about all these different, like intersections of people's identities was disability, and how, like, how good are schools in terms of like talking about different, like, accessibility needs when it comes to sex and relationships?
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, again, I probably - they're not even on the book for that one yet.
Hannah Witton
It really is like, often the last thing that people think about.
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, but I suppose - yeah, there is - and it depends on the the students that you're teaching, right. So often, these kinds of issues will only be addressed if they can be seen in the classroom. So if they can't be seen - so for example, if you had a student who had a physical disability, or who you had - that they had a particular need, then it might be like, "Okay, then we have to include it for this student." And if the problem is, is that those are not the people necessarily who need to know those things. It's everybody else who needs to be aware of them, because they are acutely aware of this as an issue for them. But other people will be less so. So again, the kind of the example in Netflix of the relationship between somebody who was able bodied, and someone who had different abilities kind of highlighted that as an issue for a lot of people who had never really thought about it. And in my school, we have hearing impaired students and we had visually impaired students as well. And for them, lots of people were like, "Okay, we need to include this." So there's a lot of really good work going on in terms of SEND work for RSE, because it's differentiated in a way that is meaningful for them. But there's so much more work that could be done around that area. But again, I'm seeing the next few years as kind of consolidating the basics, and then being able to kind of move on to more - yeah, more important intersections. But again, there's lots of you know, if you'd see the work of Triple Cripples, and all of that, there's so much that, if you're aware of it, you can draw on, because it fills the gaps in your own understanding. But it's - yeah, you have to have that awareness first to be able to draw on those different approaches to it.
Hannah Witton
And I think the approach of like, "If we can't see it, then we won't addressed it" just completely forgets the fact that if you're able bodied, you might find yourself in a relationship with somebody who's disabled, or like you might become disabled. Like, that's something that could potentially happen. I was wondering about, like, different cultures in schools as well, in terms of like, just like the different backgrounds of students and teachers. And do you like approach RSE differently, depending on like, who the students are?
Alison Wiggins
So there are - yeah, the cultural sensitivity of it again is sometimes rooted in assumptions being made about different groups that are not very well informed. So I think having - listening as a teacher is almost as important as what you say. So all PSHE and RSE lessons need to be rooted in a respect for everybody. And you have to kind of commit to an openness and commit to recognising that all of us have different thoughts and feelings about these issues. But our responsibility to each other is to listen to those, and to try and make sure that everybody gets what they need out of the lesson. So that's how I would always approach it with groups of students. And then, you know, with groups of adults as well, sometimes the knowledge and understanding that needs to be taught through the lessons is not necessarily in alignment with some of their own beliefs, opinions, preferences, ideas about things. So you have to bring it back to what the purpose of it is, which is informing young people and enabling them to make informed decisions moving forward, but also enabling empathy. So building empathy and understanding of each other's ideas, needs, and preferences is a way of everybody working together towards the same thing. I don't think you should shy away or assume that particular culture - because again, I see this, you know, there's people saying that, you know, young people who have a particular faith don't need this kind of education, which is wholly wrong. Because everybody's having relationships, right, just because they're not all sexual, it doesn't mean that they're not having relationships and the same principles don't apply. So there are some students who are removed from relationships and sex education because of their faith. And because of the preferences of their parents. The new legislation says that they can opt back in to that process when they're 15 and two terms. Specifically.
Hannah Witton
But that's so late though, because that's basically like just in their final year, and they'll have missed everything else.
Alison Wiggins
Exactly. And when a lot of schools actually scaled back the RSE and PSHE lessons.
Hannah Witton
Because they're like, "Oh, it's exam time, so."
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, so. And then you also have, I had a - I worked with a school where some people who had particular faith backgrounds felt uncomfortable wearing a rainbow lanyard. And that was a really difficult thing to kind of try and support and help with. And I think everybody got what they needed, in the end. But I think what that came to was a real misunderstanding between the groups of people who were trying to work together. So I think it's really important to listen to other people and not make judgments. And then to try and reach a compromise where everybody's working towards the same goal. If you're working in a school, your goal is to have a harmonious school, but also to make sure that your young people have what they need. And that sometimes isn't always easy to do if you're not willing to engage in the dialogue that that takes to kind of sort out. So cultural sensitivities, and particularly religious beliefs, sometimes make people quite wary to engage in relationship and sex education discussions, because sometimes things like LGBTQIA+ inclusivity is seen as a moral issue.
Hannah Witton
Right.
Alison Wiggins
But it's not a moral issue. It's not something we debate about, like, "Is it okay, if some people are like this?" That's not, that's not up for discussion. Some people are like this. And that's okay. And some people are not like that, and that's okay. But the foundation of all religion, as far as I'm concerned, is rooted in mutual respect and love. So, you know, you don't have to - I don't have to agree with you, for us to be respectful towards each other. And I think that that's what all schools should be embodying in everything that they teach, not just in RSE.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, for sure. I was wondering, like, do you have any good examples of like, how schools have like, been able to implement RSE? And like, in terms of like, everything that we've talked about, but then the other thing that's kind of playing on my mind is more of the like, logistical barriers and restrictions in terms of like timetabling and funding? And I mean, like COVID, like as well. Like, because you were saying that, you know, the guidance has only been around for like, the last year, and we've been in a pandemic this whole time.
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah, there are a lot of barriers, and people are doing, you know, teachers are doing incredible work. And often it's left to, you know, really small numbers of people to organise this for - on behalf of an entire school. So, just in terms of kind of where we are with all of those kind of barriers, so the government gave every school £250 to train all of their teachers. £250 pounds each to train all of their teachers. Now, if you're a teacher, you know that you cannot get anything for £250. So what they really meant was, "You know, just get on with it."
Hannah Witton
Oh my god.
Alison Wiggins
So some schools were already nearly there. And this has only strengthened their practice. And for some schools, particularly like faith schools and free schools, they didn't have to teach this before. So they're starting from scratch. So luckily, in most schools that I work with, they've employed somebody who's in charge of coordinating the curriculum. They've given that person, some money and some time, which are the two things that you need to be able to develop this kind of work. And they're at the start of that. So they create a curriculum - you know, curriculums can be bought in. You can pay somebody to create curriculum for you. That doesn't necessarily meet the needs of your particular group because every school is different in terms of that context, like you were talking about in terms of things like culture. Or you can give somebody the time and space to be able to do it, you incorporate all of those things. In some geographical areas in the country, it's really important to involve like local communities, and they're very involved in the curriculum. So bringing them in, showing parents, "This is what we're learning about in RSE and PSHE." So they're not worried or scared that you're exposing their children to, you know, things that they don't want them to be exposed to. And I just think yeah, It does take an investment, and it should be a part of a whole school approach. So you can't have a lovely inclusive RSC provision, if your school itself isn't inclusive, all those identities, or if your behaviour policy is working against that kind of work, you kind of need to join it all up. And schools are at really different stages. But the good thing is the PSHE Association are great. There's a lot of organisations that are willing to help like the Sex Education Forum and School of Sex Ed. So there's lots of ways of doing it. And sometimes if you don't have the expertise in house, schools are realising the investment, the worthy investment, of getting somebody in who can do it really, really well. Learning from them. And then using what you learn to make your curriculum better for the next time.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, in terms of that whole school approach as well, it just made me think about like, uniform rules as well, because they could also potentially be a place of contention, especially like, if in your RSE class, you're learning about, like gender equity, and then you're like, "Hang on a second. What's - what's it about this skirt that I have to wear?"
Alison Wiggins
Exactly. So there's, we did a whole piece of work last year with a group of MA students and a group of PSHE trainees who wanted to specialise in this and they went into school. And we created a lovely policy document that was focused on either getting students to advocate for more equitable uniform policies or to encourage staff to look at their policies. So if you can put it on your website, please do it's an amazing piece of work. But what we saw there is that all those things that we experienced, probably, if you - if you were a girl at school, you were told about the length of your skirt, and the degree to which that invited, for example, comments or sexual harassment. And if you were a boy told that, you know, your hair had to be a certain length, you weren't allowed to wear earrings, you know, and very kind of strict binaries in terms of what boys are expected to look like and what girls are expected to look like, with no consideration of people who don't necessarily fit into those.
Hannah Witton
My worst nightmare at school was the fact that I had to wear a white shirt, which obviously you can see bras through. Which just was a nightmare in terms of just like, "Well, what am I supposed to - what am I supposed to wear underneath?" And also just like, mostly boys just in the corridor, just like grabbing the back strap of your bra. And just like pinging it as you're like walking along the corridor. Just like, nightmares.
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, and that's unfortunately still happening. And then goes - again, it's the person who reports is usually going to get into trouble, not the person who's doing it.
Hannah Witton
"Oh, why are you wearing a fuchsia pink bra under your school shirt?"
Alison Wiggins
And do you know, and there are still schools that will send you home for that? There were still schools who will send you home for that.
Hannah Witton
Like, "Well, sir, why are you looking at my bra?"
Alison Wiggins
Yeah, and that is a lot of kind of what I talk about when people try to tell me that they got justifications for the way that they over-police girls bodies in terms of uniform. If your member of staff has a problem with the, you know, seeing girls' shoulders, midriffs, knees, then that's got a lot to do with that member of staff. It's got nothing to do with the girls, because the girls are just doing what they need to do and coming to school and living in their body. So yeah, we - a uniform is a huge issue that we're still dealing with. And obviously that also concerns all of the intersections we were talking about. People who have been told that their religious headwear can't be - is not professional. If you've got Afro hair, it's not professional, it's causing a nuisance, whatever. These things are still happening today. So again, you can't have good relationships and sex education or PSHE provision if, on the other hand of that, you are actively discriminating against specific groups of students.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. We have a whole bunch of questions from people on Instagram that I want to get to.
Alison Wiggins
Let's go.
Hannah Witton
There's some good ones. So somebody asked: do you have tips for non sex ed teachers when sex comes up in class? Suggestions for classroom management when topics are awkward. So maybe like, you know, sex could come up in any any class, so yeah, what should those teachers do to help to navigate those situations?
Alison Wiggins
Okay, so see any mention of it as a kind of cry for help. If they're talking about it to you as their teacher, they need to talk about it. There's something there that needs to be answered.
Hannah Witton
Like there's an outlet, and it's coming out somewhere, which means that it's like, "Okay, this needs to be talked about."
Alison Wiggins
This needs to be talked about, but you obviously can't let it derail your lesson. So it's about figuring out whether or not this is something that can be answered in the moment and not being scared of that. Like - and also modelling good learning. So if you're not sure, if student asks a question, "Oh, what about this?" And you're like, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Let me check. And I'll come back to you next lesson or next week." Don't just blag it in the moment. Please don't do that because if you get it wrong, you're creating a misconception that can have huge implications moving forward. So if it comes up, recognise there's a need there. If you can't address it in that moment, try to address it maybe privately with a student afterwards and just be like, "Hey, have you got a question? Are you okay?" Root it in making sure that they're okay, like I said, and if you feel like there is something that needs to be addressed, speak to the person who's in charge of the PSHE curriculum for that particular year group, and see if it's incorporated into there, and then check in with the student and make sure they're okay. In terms of behaviour management, it's about like having a mutual respect there in the beginning and a positive relationship with the class. So I had a geography lesson where somehow we were talking about whether or not you could have twins, if you had sex with - if a woman had sex with two men, could she have twins, where two eggs were fertilised by different sets of sperm?
Hannah Witton
Right. Yeah.
Alison Wiggins
Right. I mean, of course, that's what you talk about in Year Seven geography.
Hannah Witton
I love that question.
Alison Wiggins
So I really had to think. I was like, "Hold on a minute." And I was like, "You know what," and I wrote the question in my planner, and I went to go and ask one of my colleagues from science, and I came back and gave him the answer. And then we just moved on. He answered his question, like I answered this question, he wasn't embarrassed, no one in the class was embarrassed, but everyone was really acutely listening to the answer. And the answer is, it's, it's not - it is possible, but it's improbable. So we had talked about the difference between probability and possibility.
Hannah Witton
There you go. And then you're bringing it back to statistics as well.
Alison Wiggins
Tucking a bit of maths in there, as well. So yeah, just know that usually it's rooted in the student really needs to know something, or is really worried or, or wants to find a way of getting an answer to this question or talking to somebody about it.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Or it's just a curiosity, and you want to kind of like, encourage people like exploring, like, what they're interested in?
Alison Wiggins
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Someone asked: as a teacher, how can we know how to teach sex ed at the appropriate level, both age and academic? And I feel like this word comes up all the time, like appropriateness.
Alison Wiggins
Yeah. So age appropriate is again used as a way to kind of get out of teaching it properly. Because there is really no such thing. What there is, is a concept that you need to explore, and you need to scaffold it appropriately for the class that you have. So bearing in mind that young people are accessing porn, kind of in primary school for some of them, or at least by year seven. And then thinking about the number of girls who get unsolicited, you know, dick pics, and things by the time they're in year seven or year eight, using that as a framework for which it's really important to make sure that these young people are okay. Before, before those things or during when those things are happening to them. Thinking about, what is holding you back from having that conversation or doing that work with the student? Is it your own preconceptions of what you think they need? Or have you bothered to ask them? So just thinking about there being no generalised rule, but there are ways to introduce these topics, which feel comfortable for you and for the students, and you start small and you build as they get older. So nothing should be standalone. Like you're supposed to have a spiral curriculum, which means you start teaching consent in year seven, come back to it in year eight, it gets a bit more developed, come back to it in year nine, gets a bit more developed, come back to it in year 10. And then by the end of it, they've had five years of learning about different facets of consent, so that they've got a real confidence and they've been really well informed by the time they're, you know, 16, and they're going out into the world and where these things are actually going to really matter to them in the way that they conduct themselves with their partners,
Hannah Witton
it comes back to what we were saying before about relevancy. And so like, age appropriateness isn't something that you can just like, put a blanket like, "and then they turn this age, and now you can open the floodgates to this topic area." But it's like, "is it relevant to their life now? Or will it be imminently as well?" Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Someone asked: should gender identity be taught in primary school?
Alison Wiggins
I would say yeah, it should. But again, there's a real resistance to that in primary school. And I think, yeah, if you could get a primary school PSHE lesson - teacher, sorry, on this, it would be amazing. I've never really got the opportunity to speak to anybody who does this work at primary, but my sister is a primary school teacher. And some of the things that the student - that her young people say to her, leads her to believe that they're not immune from all the conversations that are being - that are happening kind of around them about these issues. And there's an assumption that, you know, the same happens with racism, that children are too innocent to know about these things. And if you tell them about them, you're somehow implanting the idea that this could be something they would engage with. And that's wrong. I think knowledge is power. And I think having conversations with young children, about recognising, appreciating, and respecting differences in people can only benefit them in terms of their emotional literacy and their their own sense of sense moving forward. But yeah, having open conversations. If a young person asks a question or child asks a question about gender identity, and you shut it down, you're embarrassing them and making them feel that what they are, they don't understand or what they're thinking about is wrong. And that can close the conversation full stop. And it also might have quite negative, like implications for your relationship with them moving forward, if they feel like they can't come to you with things.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, because you want that dialogue to be like, open for like when they're - when they're ready. And I also think that when people ask about things like gender identity, and when they hear the term gender identity, they automatically assume that that is only relevant for like trans, non-binary, and like gender non conforming people, when actually like cis people, like, have gender identities.
Alison Wiggins
Exactly.
Hannah Witton
There was this like, BBC Two documentary, I think I watched like a couple of years ago, called like, No More Boys and Girls. It was very, like, still very, like cis normative. But they took a class of like seven year olds, and were breaking apart, you know, all of these gender stereotypes and gender norms and ideas that these kids already had age seven, about what it means to be a boy, what it means to be a girl, what girls can do and can't do, what boys can do and can't do. And like really, like, teasing that out of them and like doing lots of like fun games and stuff to like, help them expand their idea of gender. So yeah, I'm like, "yeah, 100%, you can talk about gender in primary."
Alison Wiggins
The Secret Life of Five or Six Year Olds, I don't know if you remember that programme, that did something similar as well. And if I think about like the own - the children and my family, I have a niece and nephew, who are three and five. And they have very clear about what boys and girls can do. When my lovely nephew went to school for the first time he had long hair. And within one day, he came home and he was like, "We have to cut this hair off." One day he was at school.
Hannah Witton
Ah, yeah. I've heard similar stories like a family friend, their kid, he went to school with a more feminine lunchbox that he picked out for himself that he wanted and came home and was like, "No, I need a new lunchbox."
Alison Wiggins
And that's how early it is. So it's understanding that and the degree to which you have to challenge it so it doesn't become toxic. And it's about like understanding, building relationships, you know, developing empathy, all of those things that I think all parents want their child to have. But again, sometimes you have to be quite explicit and deliberate about making sure that happens, rather than expecting it to happen just because they're good kids and you're good parents. Like, yeah, be deliberate about it.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And somebody asked: how to deal with backlash from students themselves? Is this something you've come across?
Alison Wiggins
I don't really get backlash. Obviously, you get students trying to derail the conversation and ask you inappropriate questions so that they can kind of get out of it. And you deal with that as you would any other behavioural issue. So being really clear that the PSHE and SRE space that we're creating for these particular lessons has the same behaviour expectations as everything else does. So I always start with ground rules, whenever I'm teaching and doing anything in this kind of realm. And the ground rules are, you know, being respectful, being open minded, like being able to communicate however you want to, and also being kind to each other. So if we all agree to those ground rules, and I agree to them as well, we can hopefully create a space where those kinds of incidences are minimised.
I haven't had any backlash. I have had, when I've been trying to teach in a way that's kind of inclusive of LGBTQIA communities I've had young people say, you know, "I'm not allowed to talk about this, this is against my religion." And that is a really difficult thing to navigate, but I prioritise the relationship with the student over everything else. It's not about who's right or wrong, it's about recognising this is something that I want you to be able to understand. I'm not asking you to change your views, or your religion or anything like that. And I'm not actually going to have a debate about your religion, because you know more about your religion than I do. But I also understand that all religions are based on, like, recognition of humanity, respect for people, and love. So if those are the foundations for your faith, which I think all of the major religions are, then thinking about this is not going to hurt you. Like learning about the fact that these communities exist and these people have these kinds of relationships, it doesn't make anything worse for you. And I'm not asking you to do anything that goes against that. I'm just asking you to be open to learning. And that's it. You know, what you do with that learning when you go out into the world is absolutely fine. But everybody's getting this learning in the same way everyone's getting learning about, I don't know photosynthesis or osmosis or about, you know, Monet, whatever it is, it's just knowledge, isn't it? Like what you do with it is up to you. But for me, it's important that you have that knowledge. Once you talk to them about that. I don't think I've ever had students go "No" and just walk out. They've just kind of got there in the end. And even if they just sit quietly, and they don't really engage, that's absolutely fine.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, I love that framing of like, this isn't going to hurt you. Somebody asked, and I kind of love this question: how to talk about sex without my students thinking about the fact that I have sex? Does this come up a lot?
Alison Wiggins
What a brilliant question. Yeah. So again, as part of those ground rules, it's about not making anything personal. So agreeing through those ground rules that you're going to use distancing techniques. So rather than saying, "I like this, when I have sex" you say, "Someone might like this. When someone does this to this person, they might like it." So always distancing and never allowing it to become personal. So if a student asks you - so one of the questions I always do with my teachers, I do, "what would you do if a student asked you this" kind of activity? And so I give them a list of things that students have actually asked me. So one of them is, "Miss, do you shave your pubes?" My answer to that was, "Would it be appropriate if I asked you that question?" And they go, "No, miss?" And I was like, "Well, think about whether or not it's appropriate to ask me that question." And they go, "Yeah, actually, you're right." But what the question is, is about why people shave their pubes. So I'm happy to answer that question if you frame it properly. Don't make it about me. Let's make it about -
Hannah Witton
Yeah, what actually do they want to know?
Alison Wiggins
Right. And that's why you should never dismiss a question. Because there is always - it's always rooted in something that they're not sure about that they want to ask. But often, the way to make themselves feel comfortable is to make it about you, and not about them. So using distancing techniques, and making sure they use them, and you use them. And once they get used to that, then you can create this environment where everyone can ask a question, but it never feels like it's going to expose you or expose them.
Hannah Witton
Alison, thank you so much. This is this is just was so good. I loved talking with you about all of this stuff. And also, I feel like some of some of these things tie into parenting as well. And because I'm like about to have a kid, I'm like, "Okay, I'm ready. Like, let's go. Sex positive parenting."
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely! And that is where all of the - yeah, that's where it's all gonna come together when you're actually trying to navigate these things to make sure your baby is okay. But there's some really, really good websites that are focused on parental involvement in this because again, if all parents were comfortable talking about this kind of stuff, maybe we wouldn't need to have all of this kind of in your schooling.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, cuz you wouldn't have five year olds bullying each other for their hair or their lunchbox. Because they've not even gone to school yet. That's all come from everything they've learned pre going to school.
Alison Wiggins
Absolutely. So yeah, there's some really good work going on, with lots of organisations, and I forget the name of it now, but I can give it to you as well, where it's parents. And also, the thing about about, like good sex education from, like a family point of view is keeping the conversation going. It's not just - you don't just have the talk, that's not a thing. You have, "Oh this is a big opportunity to talk about gender. And this is a good opportunity to talk about consent. And this is a good opportunity to talk about health or contraception." Finding that in the world, not necessarily waiting for it, to have this like one horrible, intense, awkward conversation with your child, which is how it's framed, I think in a lot of media, but that is absolutely not the right way to go. But yeah, it's been so great. And I'm sure we've only scratched the surface. I'm really interested in what anyone, you know, if anyone wants to get in contact with me or ask any questions, I'm happy to answer.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, where can people find you and get in touch?
Alison Wiggins
My my, what is my Twitter. Ally underscore Wiggins. I can leave you my email address. I work at UCL, and I work for the School of Sex Ed. And I'm really happy to answer any questions and I'll leave you particularly my uniform project.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, definitely share that.
Alison Wiggins
Because that will be really, really good.
Hannah Witton
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. And thank you all very much for listening. Bye.