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consent, it has emerged.
Teachers, nurses and youth workers are being urged to set up pilot studies aimed at monitoring adolescent sexual orientation for the first time.
A report commissioned by the government’s equalities watchdog found that it was “practically and ethically” possible to interview young children about their sexuality.
Controversially, it said parental consent, while “considered good practice”, is not a legal necessity.
The report for the much-criticised Equality and Human Rights Commission recommends that children should be asked if they are gay from the age of 11.
A record should be kept of those unsure or “questioning” their sexuality.
It said monitoring sexual orientation among youngsters could help to prevent them from becoming victims of discrimination, and claims that “some young people begin to question their sexual orientation as early as age eight and may begin to identify as LGB (lesbian, gay, bisexual) from early adolescence”.
The report has provoked outrage. Graham Stuart, Tory chairman of the Commons education select committee, said the plans were “invasive, sinister and threatening”.
He added: “School should be a place of safety, not a place where pupils are picked over for the purpose of some quango; and many children won’t understand what they are talking about.”
The report – Researching and Monitoring Adolescence and Sexual Orientation: Asking the Right Questions, at the Right Time – said it is “critical” to track children’s sexuality to “shed light on the complexities of young people’s developing sexual orientation and how this may disadvantage them”.
It tell researchers not to dismiss gay feelings of interviewees as “a passing phase”.
Some youngsters, it said, may use categories such as “questioning”, “queer”, “pansexual”, “gender-queer”, “asexual”, “pan-romantic” and even “trisexual”.
Last night, a commission spokesman said: “This is independent research produced to help the commission form its policy direction.” – Daily Mail.