This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The education secretary, Gavin Williamson, has said all schools will be given support to teach relationship education, after leaflets suggesting that lessons encourage primary school children to masturbate were handed out in London.

Other material seen by the BBC said parents “will be questioned on the day of judgment” if they do not challenge the lessons on compulsory relationships education in primary schools in England and relationships and sex education (RSE) in secondary schools from September 2020.

The leaflets were distributed by the RSE School Gate Campaign group, which has since removed the claim that infants would be encouraged to masturbate in its literature.

New flyers say some teaching resources will introduce words such as masturbation to juniors. This is written in draft teaching guidance for at least one English local authority.

Williamson said on Friday : “We shouldn’t be seeing protests outside any schools. We want to make sure all pupils, parents and teachers are able to go to those schools freely without any form of intimidation. We will be there supporting and backing every single school – that’s what we have been doing.

“The purpose of it is, we wanted to make sure every single school is able to teach about Britain as it is today – but also have the flexibility to ensure that it has an understanding of the communities which it operates in.”

The School Gate Campaign said it stood by the leaflets’ other accusations including that relationship education lessons would promote “transgenderism and homosexual lifestyles”.

Rohit Dasgupta, a Labour councillor in Newham, east London, said local officials had a duty to counter the “misinformation”.

He wrote on Twitter: “It is extremely important to teach our children values of equality & respect. The government needs to grow a backbone & support schools.”

Dasgupta said the leaflets were a form of intimidation and contained untruths.

He showed the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme an example that claimed RSE would promote “transgenderism and homosexual lifestyles” and “pervert the course of natural child development”.

It added that “children in infant school will be encouraged to masturbate. First sexual experiences will be encouraged by the age of 12.”

Dasgupta said parents had also been targeted through messaging apps, with many being told there would be “consequences” if they did not attend a forthcoming parents’ meeting about RSE.

He told the programme: “I think it’s important that parents are told exactly what their children are taught. But at the end of the day the teachers, headteachers, curriculum educators are the experts.”

The councillor added: “This is about making sure we teach our children about equality.”

The government wants primary schools to cover issues including single parenting, adoption and same-sex relationships but said it would be for individual schools to decide what is age appropriate.

The proposal has led to leafleting campaigns and hundreds of mainly Muslim campaigners protesting at the gates of some primary schools.

In July, parents who spent five months in mediation with teachers at a primary school in Birmingham over LGBT equality lessons resumed protests after the school announced it would be relaunching equality teaching in September.

Parents of pupils at Parkfield community school in Saltley staged weekly protests over the relationship lessons, which they claimed promoted gay and transgender lifestyles.

In March, hundreds of mainly Muslim children, aged between four and 11, were withdrawn from the school for the day.

The RSE School Gate Campaign said: “The majority of parents do not agree with the current approach to sex education, which demands ever more explicit sex education at ever younger ages.”

The Department for Education said RSE was a vital subject and schools would be supported to deliver lessons to a high standard.

It said it was working closely with schools which had volunteered to introduce the subject next month, and was setting up a working group including parents, young people and representatives of faith and minority groups to consider the delivery of the lessons.

Parents with concerns were urged to “talk to their child’s school in a calm and constructive way”.