Britain’s embattled Conservative government has a new target: Sex education

As a general election inches closer into view, the embittered debates circulating inside British politics have entered a new arena: the classroom.

As a general election inches closer into view, the embittered debates circulating inside British politics have entered a new arena: the classroom. New guidance unveiled by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government on Thursday seeks to overhaul the way sex education and gender identity is taught in England’s schools, a significant intervention into a delicate topic that appeared suddenly on the front pages of Britain’s newspapers a day before the announcement. The government says the revised guidance, which came amid pressure from a handful of its lawmakers, provides clarity on a complex topic, emphasizing facts over what it calls “contested views” about gender identity. But critics of the plans – among them a swath of teachers and teaching union leaders – say the move is a politicized attempt to appeal to a narrow cohort of voters the government is in danger of losing, months before a general election. And they arrived amid what most see as the death throes of Sunak’s flailing government, which has for months seized upon and discarded a number of divisive topics in the hopes of reversing a stubborn polling deficit. Pepe Di’lasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and a headteacher at a school in northern England, told CNN the plans were, in his view, driven by “a political agenda at the front of a campaign season.”