Sex Education

Sex education is a broad term used to describe education about human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, and other aspects of human sexual behavior. Common avenues for sex education are parents or caregivers, school programs, and public health campaigns.

What are the aims of sex education?

Sex education seeks both to reduce the risks of potentially negative outcomes from sexual behaviour like unwanted or unplanned pregnancies and infection with sexually transmitted diseases, and to enhance the quality of relationships. It is also about developing young people’s ability to make decisions over their entire lifetime. Sex education that works, by which we mean that it is effective, is sex education that contributes to this overall aim.

Comprehensive Sex Education

Substantial evidence of the effectiveness of comprehensive sex education has recently emerged. Comprehensive sex education addresses both abstinence and age-appropriate, medically accurate information about contraception. Comprehensive sex education is also developmentally appropriate, introducing information on relationships, decision-making, assertiveness, and skill building to resist social/peer pressure, depending on grade-level.

Sexual emotional abuse
When most of us think of sexual abuse, we think of inappropriate touch: fondling, forced masturbation, even outright rape. But there is also an insidious kind of sexual abuse that requires no bodily contact whatsoever. Sexual emotional abuse. Sexual emotional abuse may accompany different kinds of physical sexual abuse, or it may exist completely on its own.

Sex Education Forum investigates on-site sexual health services in schools and pupil referral units

The Sex Education Forum (SEF) has conducted the first ever national survey (download report) of on-site sexual health services in secondary schools, and pupil referral units (PRUs), and is pleased to have found that so many schools are providing these vital services for young people.

Research shows that honest, medically accurate sex education works. “Abstinence-only” programs aren’t proven effective, and some studies even show that young people who go through these programs are less likely to use contraception and protect themselves when they become sexually active. Making matters worse, many of these “abstinence-only” programs include blatantly false and inaccurate information.