Equal Opportunities Committee, 07 Nov 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, November 7, 2000

Official Report 196KB pdf

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Sex Education

I restart the meeting.

I apologise—I may have to leave before the end of the meeting as I have another meeting to go to.

We might be finished in time.

There is a paper on item 7, which was carried over from last week. It is the consultation exercise on sex education in schools. The options are to take evidence or to ask the clerk to draft a report that we can consider at a later meeting.

I have mixed feelings on this. It might be better to take evidence, as we have given such emphasis to the fact that we are accessible and open to consultation. Such importance was given to the strength of the guidance that schools were going to receive and the whole section 2A debate that it would be politic to have people comment on it.

The deadline for the response is 22 December, so we do not have much time. I am sure that we could fit an evidence-taking session into one of the committee meetings before that.

I have similar reservations to Nora Radcliffe's. I wonder whether it is possible to do both. If we do not have much time and if there are a number of organisations that we want to hear evidence from, it might speed up the process if the clerks could produce a report that would mean that we would not need to take so much evidence.

Is everybody happy with that?

Members indicated agreement.