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.

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Playing with figures of sexual health

A single research project can be reported on in different ways depending on what you want to do. Take the following two articles both reporting on the same research by the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine. The research shows how many girls in the study thought the HPV vaccine also reduced their risk of catching other STIs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083260/One-teenage-girls-thinks-HPV-vaccine-cuts-risk-contracting-STDs.html
http://www.healthnews.com/en/news/Some-Girls-Overestimate-HPV-Vaccine-Protection/3hFUdOev1E8wSjg313QPZq/

The daily mail report emphasis 1 in 4, I believe this is because they are trying to show how it is a big problem. Where as Health News states "show that a small percentage of girls" I believe this is because they are trying to show it is not a big problem. Both quoting the same study with the same figure of 23.6% of girls having the HPV vaccine believing it will reduce their risk of catching other STIs.

Now this is a common o…

Agree - Disagree Sex and Relationship Statements

Today I shared another resource listing the agree disagree statement I often use in Relationship lessons. I find agree disagree activities as a bit of a two edge sword. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they just seem flat.

I think agree/disagree activities work well if young people in the group do not all think the same. The true value in agree/disagree activities is the discussion it can stir up. The discussion is the point where young people learn things and develop their attitudes. The statements need to be crafted to try and divide opinion and stir up this discussion. When the statements do not divide group opinion then rarely will I get a good follow up discussion. The problem is that the statements that work well for one group do not work for another group.

The temptation is to try and pick truly controversial issues but I have had as much success with the historically controversial issues (abortion, porn etc) as the more standard issues (loyalty, respect, condoms, etc). T…

Review of Channel 4's Sex in Class

Review of Channel 4's Sex in Class from a relationship and sex educator's perspective.In this review I will try and bring my perspective as a relationship and sex educator to look at Channel 4's one off show Sex In Class. The show is about a Belgian sexologist Goedele Liekens testing out her approach to relationship and sex education for 15-16 year olds at a Lancashire school. You can read some great overall reviews from Jules Hillier at Brook and Sam Wollaston at the Guardian of the show. In this blog I am trying to focus specifically on my my perspective as a relationship and sex educator on Goedele's content and approach.

The show starts with a pretty unsurprising statistic of "83% of kids have seen porn by the time they are 13" (source not cited) and goes on to show how teachers at this school don't think current RSE is good enough and also gives some quotes from young people involved. Such as "It [porn] doesn't give you a lot of information…

Blindfish RSE

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