The United Kingdom has proposed a ban on sex education in schools for under-nines including gender identity. 

This was contained in a new draft guidance introduced by the country’s government, on Wednesday. 

The United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the new guidance would ensure children were not “exposed to disturbing content.”

Mr Sunak noted that parents rightly trust that when they send their children to school, they are kept safe and will not be exposed to disturbing content that is inappropriate for their age.

“That’s why I was horrified to hear reports of this happening in our classrooms last year.I will always act swiftly to protect our children and this new guidance will do exactly that while supporting teachers to teach these important topics sensitively and giving parents access to curriculum content if they wish,” he said. 

In the plans, the secondary school pupils would learn about protected characteristics, such as sexual orientation and gender reassignment.

However, the country’s teaching union has kicked, describing the review as “politically motivated.” 

Also, school teachers have said there is no evidence of a widespread problem.

But the government said the updated guidance makes it clear that schools “should not teach about the concept of gender identity.”

The education secretary, Gillian Keegan, said biological sex is the basis of relationship, sex and health education and not the contested views.

Ms Keegan told the BBC that the government was also strengthening rules to make it easier for parents to access teaching materials from schools, to see what their children are learning.

Ms Keegan said the new guidance had been motivated by a request from teachers “to provide more clarity” on age-appropriate sex education, but she had also seen reports of “campaign groups’ or lobby groups’ materials” being used in classrooms.

She said she received evidence of lesson slides including “things like choosing lots of different genders and identities and saying which ones of these are gender identities – the spectrum.

She said, “Parents are the first educators of their children, so there should be transparency and they should be able to see the materials, and we’ve made that crystal clear.”

Some parents already welcomed the idea of restrictions on sex education.

But others pointed out a danger because if children could not receive information about certain topics from their teachers, they were more likely to take in potentially harmful content looking for the answers online.