Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Sex education a turn-off for NI schoolkids
Teaching too ‘scientific’ say youngsters
SEX education in schools is “useless” and too “scientific” a survey put together by teens has found.
An online study by the Belfast Youth Forum showed 34% of young people had never received a relationship and sex education lesson in school.
Only 23% felt adults trusted them to make their own decisions and the older a young person becomes, the poorer they think this education is.
Despite this, 86% felt school was still the best place to receive this information, while three quarters believed it should not be i nf luenced by the ethos or religion of the school.
The Belfast Youth Forum is made up of 40 young people from across Belfast, with members aged between 13 and 18.
For the past two years it has worked on campaigns looking at relationship and sexuality education, poverty, mental health, racism and diversity.
The “Any Use” research report took the opinions of 771 i ndiv i dual s i n c o n j u n c t i o n wit h the children’s rights centre at Queen’s University and with Common Youth, a local charity.
The findings and methodology are so powerful the health trusts have sat up and taken notice.
The South Eastern HSC Trust has contacted the Forum with a view to rolling out the survey across Northern Ireland.
At this week’s Belfast Council meeting of the People And Communities committee, members of the youth forum updated councillors on their work.
Luke Potterson said: “This report highlighted how young people felt about their relationship and sexual education, and as you can tell, it wasn’t great. “A number of words were used such as useless, biased, unhelpful, basic and scientific to describe their learning.
“Regarding where young people learn this education, what is disturbing is that school is only the third most popular way in which children learn about relationships and sex. “First is talking with friends and second is social media. “It is important that young people find out about this in a safe and informative environment where there is factual information.”
Mr Potterson told councillors the campaign had three main aims.
These are to adopt a “rights-based proactive approach” to relationship and sexuality education, to work with young people to co-produce a curriculum programme for schools and to make sure that curriculum should be taught by specialised, qualified and trained staff.
He added: “We are also looking at the different ways we can work with the health and social care trusts and the sexual health co-ordinator of the Belfast Trust, who has been invited to our next meeting in December.”