Skip to main content

Teenage conception rates go down, lets keep the good work up

Teen pregnancies at 40-year low
This is obviously great news and it is great to have the BBC publish a quote directly crediting this decline to the work of relationship and sex educators.

The article does end with a note of caution. Our rates of teenage conception are still higher then the rest of Western Europe. We still have a significant teenage pregnancy problem that needs consistant funding. Maybe i am too pesermistic but I worry that good news like this will lead to people cutting funding to the area "because we have solved that problem now". It is not solved thousands of young people are still getting pregnant when they didnt want to.

I hope this good news is seen as a validation of the value of good sex and relationship education. Lets hope those government officials involved in the on going PSHE review will hear and preserve the importance of SRE, it needs to be added as a compulsart element of education. The role of outside expert educators should not be forgotten.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A RSE reading list

Sometimes people ask me what reading I recommend around RSE, so I thought I would put together a bit of a list.  Key (free) articles and reports  Young people’s RSE UK poll  Sex Education Forum (2018) RSE outcome variations due to facilitator differences  Young et al (2018) What do young people think about their school-based sex and relationship education? A qualitative synthesis of young people's views and experiences Pound et al. (2016) Review of sexual abuse in schools and college s Ofsted (2021) National and International RSE Guidance  UNESCO international guidance on RSE  UNESCO (2018) England   Department for Education full guidance on statutory relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education  Department for Education (2019) Wales Curriculum for Wales guidance and code for Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE)  (Consultation stage) Welsh Government (2021)  Scotland  Guidance for teachers on the conduct of teaching relationships, sex

A good question about Aims

I was recently asked this question and it made me think long and hard. Read my response below it. *I would like to know more about your overall goal - in other words what is it you are trying to change. Do you consider it is more about raising awareness or changing behaviour (I am sure there are elements of both) and are you clear about the changes you want to see as a result of what you do - it will be very hard to measure the effect/impact of what you are doing without knowing this. I would say that changing behaviour is my goal, firstly by changing attitudes towards sex and relationships and secondly by equipping them with skills that change their behaviour to stay safer. For me the 3 changes I want to see are - a greater recognition of the emotional impact of sexual activity - a delay of a young persons first sexual experience - a greater proportion of young people using protection correctly when they are sexually active My biggest worry is how to measure these three changes?