LONDON — English schools will significantly broaden sex and relationship education to cover topics including same-sex relationships, transgender people, menstruation, sexual assault, mental health, genital cutting, forced marriage, pornography and sexting, the government has announced.

The changes, the first revision of the sex education curriculum since 2000, have met with vocal opposition from some parents and religious schools that want the ability to opt out of elements they object to. But they formally became government policy when they were published on Monday, and will go into effect in September 2020.

“There is no set of guidance that you can come up with for relationship and sex education that everybody’s going to be absolutely happy with,” Damian Hinds, Britain’s education secretary, said in Parliament on Monday, after announcing the revisions.

“Our guiding principles have been that these compulsory subjects should help to keep children safe, should help to prepare them for the world in which they’re growing up,” he added, and also “help them foster respect for others and for difference.”

Parents would have the ability to exclude their children from some elements, including the most explicitly sexual, but not others, and not after age 14, said Mr. Hinds, a member of the Conservative government. From age 15, it will up to the student to decide whether to participate fully.

The curriculum developed by Britain’s central government will be mandatory for any school in England that receives government funds, including religious schools; it was drafted under a 2017 law instructing the government to update the policy. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have separate standards.

An online petition asking for parents to be given broader power to opt out had gathered more than 100,000 signatures by Monday morning, prompting Parliament to debate the matter — an airing of views that did not affect the policy — while dozens of protesters gathered outside.

The government was “pretty much indoctrinating the children with a specific ideology that there is no such thing as right or wrong, it’s just whatever you like basically,” said Musa Mohammed, a 32-year-old father of three who joined the protest. “These are our children — they belong to the parents, they don’t belong to the state.”

Britta Riby-Smith, a mother of three, said she was there to support “the Christian cause.”

Under the new curriculum, as the children get older, “the L.G.B.T. kind of agenda becomes stronger,” she said. “This is something I want my children to know about — I don’t want them to be ignorant, definitely not — but I would like to teach them about this myself.”

But Helen Jones, a Labour lawmaker, insisted in Parliament that the new program did not advocate any particular set of views, but was designed to prepare children to deal with the world as it is.

“Young people who receive good relationship and sex education are less likely to form early sexual relationships, less likely to have an unwanted pregnancy, less likely to get pregnant early, and less likely to get a sexually transmitted disease,” she said.

Some women’s health advocates had specifically campaigned for teaching about menstrual health, arguing that girls were often unaware of the signs of painful or dangerous conditions.

Jessica Ringrose, a professor of sociology of gender and education at University College London, called the curriculum promising, saying in an interview, “It will be really great if they will be able to tackle all these issues.”

Sex education already exists in most English schools, but under the 2000 policy, the curriculum is more limited and more geared toward secondary schools, and much of it is not mandatory. Children generally begin secondary school at age 11.

The new standards include mandatory primary and secondary school education on what makes a healthy or unhealthy relationship, part of an expanded focus on physical and mental health. Basic sex education late in primary school is recommended but not required.

The secondary sex education curriculum includes new topics like the fact that “there are different types of committed, stable relationships,” “what constitutes sexual harassment and sexual violence,” and that “sexually explicit material often presents a distorted picture of sexual behaviors.”

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