With their plans for sex education, the Tories are keen to remind us of Section 28

The Conservatives’ infamous law that prevented homosexuality being discussed in the classroom harmed a generation of adolescents. Their new plans to put age limits on sex and relationship education will do nothing to help today’s schoolchildren struggling with their sexuality – and I should know, says Neil Alexander

Positive role models: Joe Lock and Kit Connor in ‘Heartstopper’ (Samuel Dore/Netflix)

For someone like me who grew up in the 1980s, under the shadow of Margaret Thatcher’s Section 28 – a law that forbade the explicit teaching of homosexuality in schools – it’s hard to avoid making parallels with the Conservatives’ new sex education guidelines for schools.

According to a leaked memo, the education secretary Gillian Keegan is to announce that the discussion of certain topics in class will now be dependent on pupils’ ages, notably that children won’t be given sex education before the age of 9.

But, as an educator myself, it looks like not much will actually change. A key difference is a new insistence that teachers maintain that there are two biological sexes, and that lessons should focus on “biological” facts about sex. Gender identity ideology will only be taught as a “contested subject”.