Suspending belief? School leaders’ framing of religion in parental consultation on compulsory relationships and sex education

Abstract

In 2020, the UK government gave school leaders in England the duty to consult parents on Relationships and Sex Education. This duty was introduced at a time of heightened international media, political and academic attention on religious parents’ concerns about compulsory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curricula. Despite this interest, there exists little empirical research into the ways in which school leaders consider religious parents’ views in relation to compulsory RSE. Using data from qualitative interviews with secondary school leaders in Birmingham, England, this paper provides new understandings of the possibilities for religious parents’ participation in consultation processes. It finds that these processes can amount to thin democratic practices which aim to secure consent and reconciliation through a hyperfocus on equality and child protection. In response, the paper considers the affordances of an agonistic pluralist orientation to consultation that can account for the inevitability of political dissensus in school communities. It provides insight into barriers to the involvement of parents in consultation processes both for those working in contexts where RSE is already compulsory, and for those working in territories considering making it compulsory. Its engagement with agonistic pluralism invites researchers and educators to consider democratic possibilities beyond current arrangements.