Current Issues |
| April/May 2002 |  |
| Parents 'abandon sex education role' | |
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By John Clare, Education Editor PARENTS - especially fathers - have largely abandoned their responsibility for teaching their children about sex, Ofsted said in a report yesterday. Instead, they left them to glean what they could from teenage magazines in which the underlying message was that sexual activity was the norm, perhaps contributing to Britain having the highest teenage birth rate in western Europe. Ten years ago about 30 per cent of children aged 12 to 15 identified their parents as their main source of advice and information on sexual matters, Ofsted said. Now the proportion had fallen to about eight per cent. Yet when pupils were asked who should be their main source of information, up to 50 per cent said it ought to be their parents. "A frequent response by pupils was that, in an ideal world, parents should be the main source, but they accepted that this was unlikely because of embarrassment on both sides," Ofsted said. "Some parents - more often fathers than mothers - are reluctant to take a greater part in talking about sex and relationships with their children because they feel they lack the necessary knowledge and skills." Ofsted acknowledged that the problem was not new. In 1943 a Board of Education report on sex education in schools said: "It appears that a substantial proportion of parents either have some reluctance to give such knowledge to their children, or feel the need of some guidance on how best to deal with the matter." In that year, however, many parents were "absent from home", with the result that parental advice that might have been given was not available. "As a result, there is an increasing sense among teachers that they have a degree of responsibility for seeing that their pupils shall have some simple measure of sex education before leaving the school," the Board of Education report had said. From such beginnings had grown what was now known as "sex and relationships education", which all pupils were to be taught in science, religious education and personal, social and health education throughout their school years. However, the quality of instruction was very variable, Ofsted said. Rather more emphasis was placed on the "factual aspects" of sex than on teaching values and attitudes and assisting pupils' moral and emotional development. Sexuality was a topic that many teachers were nervous about approaching and dealt with only superficially. Pupils were critical, too. "We are taught about reproduction but not about being in loving relationships and making love," a 15-year-old girl told the inspectors. "It's no wonder some don't use condoms." "Most of what we're taught is for the girls - it's all about what happens to them," a 16-year-old boy said. "No one tells the boys what responsibilities they have." More advice should be made available to parents, especially fathers, to enable more of them to talk constructively with their children about sex and relationships, Ofsted said. |