Sex Education in Schools ‘Inadequate’

By HANN, Arwen

Most schools are not teaching sex education well enough, a new report says.

The report by the Education Review Office found that intermediate and secondary schools spend an average of just eight to 12 hours a year teaching students about sexuality, and at least half used teachers with no qualifications in the subject.

The report was commissioned by the ministries of Women’s Affairs, Health and Education following concerns about New Zealand’s high rate of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

The country has the second highest rate of teen pregnancies among OECD countries. The report found that, while some schools were teaching the subject very well, others were failing in several aspects.

The two areas of worst performance were assessing how well students were learning and catering for students from different ethnic backgrounds or of different sexualities.

Several schools used outsiders such as public health nurses to deliver the lessons.

However, the report found that using outsiders did not necessarily improve the effectiveness of the teaching.

Sexuality education was made a compulsory part of the National Curriculum in 2001 and schools are required to consult with the community every two years on the design and implementation of their lessons.

The Family Planning Association said the report highlighted that schools needed more help.

Chief executive Jackie Edmond said the association understood the pressures schools were under and suggested they be given clearer guidelines on the curriculum.

Cashmere High School principal Dave Turnbull said the school spent about an hour a week teaching Year 9 and 10 students health education as part of its physical education programme, and sexuality education would form part of that.

“In an ideal world kids would feel OK about talking to their parents about this kind of thing but it doesn’t always happen so I guess schools need to play a part,” Turnbull said.

“We use our physical education teachers to do it, and part of their training is in health education.

“I don’t know that we would go into a great deal of detail into assessing how the students were learning. I am not quite sure how we would do that.”

Turnbull was aware of the requirement to consult parents about the curriculum but said consultation was more likely to take place as part of a questionnaire to parents or during another school event.

Canterbury University Secondary Health Education curriculum co- ordinator Melissa Fenton said many schools could not fit enough health education into the timetable, which meant they could not cover the subject in depth.

“The recommended time for the delivery of the health education curriculum is two periods per week for the entire school year at each of Years 9 and 10. Most schools would be doing half this at best,” she said.

Women’s Affairs Minister Lianne Dalziel said research showed that effective sex education could help improve young people’s decision making. “We believe that improvements in their knowledge, skills, and attitudes will result in more informed decisions by young people about their sexual and reproductive health and will reduce risky behaviour,” she said.

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