The bill removes a stipulation that RE teaching should be at least ’broadly Christian’.

A section on compulsory elements of the curriculum says these include ’education in religion, ethics and values, avoiding proselytising for any particular religion or religious approach’.

Although it is possible more specifics could be added when a comprehensive all-school curriculum is drawn up, as it stands the bill is less specific than the 2001 Education Act.

That legislation specifies religious education ’shall be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character’.

It is understood that the DESC does not currently plan to include such a specification in any subsequent curriculum order.

The new bill stipulates the need to incorporate Manx culture, including language and history, in the curriculum. That is similar to the 2001 Act, although the reference to ’Gaelic’ has gone.

A new addition, however, is that the curriculum must ’include age-appropriate education about sex and relationships, health and lifestyle, and economic and other wellbeing’.

And the curriculum should also include ’opportunities for physical education’.

The wording of this part of the bill appears to be deliberately flexible, to allow schools room to manoeuvre.

For instance, the role of religion could possibly be included in culture.