Catholic Education Service 'helped draft Ed Balls's sex education guidelines'

[didymus]

The Telegraph:

Catholic Education Service 'helped draft Ed Balls’s sex education guidelines

Has the Catholic Education Service actually helped the Government draw up its sex education propaganda? That’s the question being asked by many of my Catholic contacts this week. They have read an item on the blog of John Smeaton, director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, whose headline reads bluntly:Catholic Education Service has helped draft the Government’s anti-life/anti-family sex ed draft guidance
Smeaton quotes a press release from the Department for Children, Schools and Families in which the CES director, Oona Stannard, says the sex education guidelines are “a very positive step forward”. She clearly believes that Labour’s (pretty disgusting) plans to teach primary school children about sex are compatible with Catholic teaching, given various exemptions that this impeccably trustworthy Government has offered the bishops. That much we knew. But I was surprised to learn in addition that the CES was – to quote the Government’s own press release – one of the bodies “involved in developing the draft guidance“, along with bodies such as the pro-abortion Sex Education Forum.

Many active Catholic lay people and priests – by no means all of them strict conservatives such as Smeaton – have expressed disquiet at the stance of the Catholic Education Service. They can’t understand why Ms Stannard adopts such a softly-softly approach towards a Schools Secretary who is unusually hostile to Catholic teaching even by the standards of the Labour Left.

Have a look at this correspondence between the Catholic blogger James Preece and the CES. The latter comes across as an evasive body, to say the least – and more than a little cross at being bothered by one of those dreadful Catholic conservatives.

It’s worth reading the e-mail exchange he links to, the attitude shown is something to behold.