Compulsory sex lessons for primary school children as young as five are to be backed by the British government's official advisers on sexual behavior in an unpublished report. The proposals are the biggest shake-up in sex education to be proposed for schools in England and Wales.
The document says the current system for sex lessons, which is optional, is unfair, confused, damaging to pupils' health and development and partly responsible for Britain having the highest rate of teenage pregnancy in western Europe. At present a minority of pupils are given full details about subjects such as contraception and sexually transmitted infections, while the rest get only basic biological information.
A joint report from the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health, which advises the Department of Health, and the Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy, which reports to ministers at the Department for Education and Skills, is proposing that detailed knowledge about sex become a routine part of all pupils' education.
The group's 42 members include senior doctors, experts in sexual behavior, specialists in bringing up children, nurses, and leading academics in the field. They want ministers to make Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) a statutory subject in all primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. Some schools provide PSHE to help prepare their students understand the adult world of sex, alcohol, drugs and bullying.
The Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) element of PSHE includes much more in-depth discussion about sexual activity than the factual reproductive biology all pupils cover in science lessons as well as tuition on how to deal with pressure from friends or partners to have sex, where to get contraception and how infections such as chlamydia and genital warts are passed on.
The report, Personal, Social and Health Education in schools: Time for Action, has been compiled by the Independent Advisory Groups on Sexual Health and Teenage Pregnancy, which advise the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills.
Joyce Gould, the Labour peer who chaired the two groups' combined inquiry, said on Saturday that the government should make PSHE a statutory part of the national curriculum in order to tackle the high number of teenage girls becoming pregnant, the rising levels of sexually transmitted infections and widespread ignorance among young people about sex.
Gould denied that the group's proposals would encourage promiscuity.
"Some people will say that if you don't tell them about it, they won't do it. But real life shows that's not the case. More and more young people are having sex at a younger age," she said.
Gill Frances, the chair of the teenage pregnancy advisors, said introducing SRE at all schools was vital to help understand complicated sexual issues. "Young people are growing up in an increasingly sexualized society, where there are mixed messages. On the one hand we are titillated and entertained by pictures of women's bodies and celebrities' sex lives, yet on the other a young person who gets pregnant or contracts an STI is vilified," she said.
Frances, the director of children's development at the National Children's Bureau, said schools and parents had a shared responsibility to prepare young people for the challenges of adult life by giving them the knowledge and skills to handle issues such as sex, diet, exercise and violence. Mandatory PSHE would make many young people more likely to postpone their first sexual experience, and more confident at engaging with the opposite sex.
It points out that teenage pregnancy in Liverpool, Bradford and Hackney, in east London, fell after schools introduced PSHE and SRE.
The report is likely to lead to tension in Whitehall. Education secretary Ruth Kelly, a devout Catholic, is thought likely to oppose such a dramatic extension of pupils' knowledge about sex.
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