In Depth:  Family Education Trust

Ellie was groomed from the age of 12 and was subsequently a victim of human traf-ficking and child sexual exploitation for seven years. She describes being trafficked as a ‘life sentence’. Now a young woman of 23, she experiences regular flashbacks to the trauma she suffered and lives with ongoing medical complications.

In Ellie’s own words: ‘There were so many times as a young girl I would walk into a pharmacy, or the doctors, and could very easily get contraception without being questioned as to why, at the age of 12 and throughout my teens, I would even be in the position to need it.

Questions surrounding personal identity were a recurring theme at a conference organised by the Family Education Trust in central London in June.

Several speakers referred to the gender identity agenda which has come very much to the fore in recent months and is advancing rapidly as growing numbers of people are insisting on their ‘right’ to be treated and regarded as something other than their biological sex.

Two academics subjected major current trends in education to careful critique at this year’s Family Education Trust conference in June, with over 100 packing the ballroom at the RAF Club in Piccadilly.

Dr Mark Pike, Associate Professor in Educational Values and Pedagogy at the University of Leeds, applied the insights of C. S. Lewis to the present educational scene. He noted that in a pluralistic society, teachers struggle to subscribe to any set of values and so they often ‘commit themselves to nothing in particular – or to an undefined humanism where the only question is one of personal feeling’.

According to advice jointly published in the early part of 2014 by Brook, the Sex Education Forum and the PSHE Association, over four-fifths of parents want schools to provide lessons addressing issues surrounding pornography.

What isn’t known is whether the majority of parents want teachers to subject their children to the kind of classes advocated by the sex education lobby as the proposed content is more explicit than one might assume.

May 18 saw the Family Education Trust conference held in central London thinking about What is Marriage?

Not so many years ago, it would have seemed a ridiculous question. There was a widespread consensus as to what constitutes a marriage. But in the context of the current debate surrounding same-sex relationships, there is considerable confusion surrounding the meaning of marriage and it is a question that desperately needs to be calmly and honestly addressed.