My Lords, I support my noble friend’s commendable Amendment 466. He is right about the misuse of the concept of commercially confidential contractual relationships between the education provider and the company providing the material. We need to go back to an accountability that we had with the old-fashioned model of school textbooks. They contained knowledge that had been honed over the ages and was visible and accessible to all, and rightly so. It is the heritage that we need to pass on to our children. What we have seen are some examples of RSHE and other school resources that are low-quality, unscientific, ideological or political. These resources are often provided to schools as worksheets by online school resource providers and they are not in the public domain Indeed, the business model requires them to be available by subscription only. I have some examples that I could draw to the attention of the Committee, but I will not go into too much detail.

The point is that teaching works when it can bring pupils together with a shared educational experience. Often, some of the contested issues around microaggression, casual racism, critical race theory, et cetera, and particular preposterous, unscientific nonsense around gender ideology—which can have an impact on young, vulnerable children and their families—are not open to the transparency and clarity we really need. Education should be a unifying experience and not divide children in this contentious way.

To give one example, moving away slightly from RSHE but pertinent to this amendment, there is a resource I have seen which states:

“The wealth of the British Empire was built upon the enslavement and labour of people from across the Empire”.

That is historically ignorant, in that the United Kingdom —Great Britain—gave up a third of its national wealth to destroy slavery, so there has to be context.

There is a pattern here. The internet has made so much knowledge accessible to all, but it has also allowed harmful nonsense to flourish, as is widely recognised. That is why this amendment is timely. As a society, we are looking at how the internet and technology usage are impacting our schools and children in ways that may be harmful. We should extend that exploration to this area. The business model of online resource provision to schools has grown and flourished over 20 years or so, largely unregulated and unreviewed. In the area of RSHE, it is already clear that contested nonsense has been allowed to flourish, much of it by online resource providers.

With this amendment, we could all see what we are teaching our children in RSHE. There would be accountability and transparency. Let us ensure that it is done using only resources that are fully available in the public domain. On that basis, I support my noble friend’s amendment.