More children in the UK educated about sex in schools
More young people in Britain are learning about sex at school than years ago, according to a series of surveys.
The trend toward school-based education may be positive, said Dr. Clare Tanton, the study’s lead author from the University College London.
As schools educate young people about sex, education from less “authoritative sources” like friends and first sexual partners becomes less common, she noted.
“School-based sex ed has the potential to reduce inequalities in information and we found that those reporting school as their main source were less likely to report wanting more information,” Tanton told Reuters Health by email.
As reported in the journal BMJ Open, the researchers analyzed data from a survey conducted between 2010 and 2012 of nearly 4,000 people ages 16 to 24. Their answers were compared with previous surveys from 1990–1991 and 1999-2001.
The young people identified where they learned about sexual matters, and where specifically they had learned the most. Their options included family members, friends, school lessons and doctors.
They chose from a list of factors they would have liked to know more about when they eventually did start having sex, like sexual feelings, how to say “no,” contraception or masturbation.
Roughly four out of 10 people reported in 2010-2012 that school had been their main source of sexual information when they were growing up. This was an increase from about three out of 10 people in 1990-1991.
In 2010-2012, about a quarter of respondents said their friends were the main source of information. About 7 % of men and about 14 % of women said their parents were their main sources of information about sex.
About 12 % of men and about 5 % of women said their first sexual partner educated them most about sex.
Some young people – mostly men – reported the Internet and pornography as their main sources of information about sex.
While roughly 70 % of people wished they had more information before becoming sexually active, that rate was similar to past studies.
In a companion analysis, the authors found that people whose main source of information was school, particularly women, tended to start having sex at an older age, use safer sex practices, and have fewer experiences with abortion or distress around sexual experiences.
But Tanton said the quality of school-based sex education is variable in Britain.
One 2013 report found that sex and relationship education needed improvement in about a third of schools, she said. Many focused more on the mechanics of intercourse than on actual relationships.
“It is important that wider aspects sexual health and of healthy relationships are considered from both young women’s and young men’s perspective,” said Dr. Wendy Macdowall of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Macdowall, the lead author of the companion analysis, said it was surprising to see how low parents featured on the list of sources and how gendered it was.
Many men would have preferred their fathers to have been a main source of information, but that was rarely the case, Tanton noted.
Macdowall said more than half of young men and just under half of young women did not report an “authoritative” main source of information, like parents, school or doctors.
It’s hard to say if these findings would have been similar in other countries, Tanton said.
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