Blindfish RSE

This is my initial thoughts in response to the governments launch of a new National Curriculum. But before we get into the details its important to remember that not every school in the country will need to follow the curriculum, academies do not have to follow the curriculum. As with every curriculum their will also be a fair amount of school interpretation for any part of the curriculum that does not make it onto a test. So I believe this National Curriculum should be seen as the governments rough idea of what it thinks should be happening. I think locally things will be delivered differently depending on Head Teachers, Heads of Subjects etc. This is my quick skim through with a SRE perspective please correct me if I make any mistakes of miss something important.  ***UPDATE 09-07-13*** The Sex Education Forum has released this short response   it does a great job of providing a clear summary of the key points, much more concise than my rambli...

This blog is blocked in Starbucks free WiFi, I had a little poke around and found a few other SRE sites blocked (some of which now seem to have been unblocked). I sent an email to Starbucks about my concerns and today I received this reply. Always nice to get a reply but sadly it doesn't seem to actually say that much. Why is Sex and Relationship Education information blocked? Is the content of this blog a danger to young people? Dear Gareth, Thank you for contacting Starbucks. We appreciate you sharing your concerns regarding Wi-Fi in our stores and I would like to assure you that we have been working on a solution with our provider, BT, which means that customers get the right balance between the protection and the freedom they want and need online. We are close to implementing this solution and part of it will be to restrict access to sites which are not deemed appropriate to view in a busy public environment. BT has also shared the follow...

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the #SASHevent2013  Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn" Firstly my presentation Documents Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Healthwith Brook, FPA, The National Youth Agency People and Pornography - A Briefing for Workers NSPCC sexting study Summary report of the qualitative study Full report of the qualitative study   McAfee The Digital Divide: How the Online Behavior of Teens is Getting Past Parents  Digital Divide BBC Newsbeat Survey  Men worried about Porn Sex Education Vs Pornography statistics taken from show episodes, they are currently unavailable but you can find useful stuff at their   sexperince website   Youtube clip   from Friends episode about the need to turn off the porn Books I may not agree with everything in these books but they have some interesting bits. Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain   William M...

Today I read this article by Louise Tickle   "Does Sex Education exclud e young gay people?"   Personally in my work I have always tried to be gender and sexuality neutral in all my lessons. I always use the term "partners" or using the full phrase "a boyfriend or girlfriend" in every sentence to any gender student. But sometimes I still find myself falling into hetronormative language. It is not a choice but an unconscious accident.  For example I had a interesting situation doing a condom demonstration in a school with a girl constantly talking over me (which I find so annoying).  I asked  " Please listen for a few minutes then you could speak with your friends."    She replied.  "But I don't need to know this"   I replied "you never know what might happen in the future and it both a male and a females  shared responsibility to know how to minimize risks" ...

This week I have read 3 separate stories (just on BBC) all talking about how the internet is negatively impacting the sexual health of the nation. Young get sex health warning http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14837229 MPs told young children accessing explicit porn http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14845299 .XXX web domain registration begins http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14821192 Now the third one might be a bit unconnected but the discussion around it all fits. What is the modern impact of all the sexual content on the internet. For one year I have been teaching on the issue of "sexting" in secondary schools. Working hard to try and help young people understand the emotional consequences of taking the risk of sharing naked or provocative pictures. This work has opened up my perspective to the much larger area of the impact of digital sexual content. Trying to do research on this topic is a lot harder then looking at STIs. Emotional and social consequences can not b...

On Wednesday the 24th of November Education Secretary Michael Gov set out his white paper The Importance of Teaching I am both happy that SRE is mentioned and sad that it is so brief I can quote it in full, but does it mean anything for us teaching SRE in schools? 4.29 Children need high-quality sex and relationships education so they can make wise and informed choices. We will work with teachers, parents, faith groups and campaign groups such as Stonewall to make sure sex and relationships education encompasses an understanding of the ways in which humans love each other and stresses the importance of respecting individual autonomy. Firstly great to see the government honestly stating that high-quality SRE is needed. It falls short of saying that it is needed in schools which is a shame, this does leave wiggle room for them to possibly claim that yes it is needed but not in school. The 4 groups it states it will work with is good but again it falls short it is missing an important ele...

I was happy to read today about an MP from wales standing up and speaking out for compulsory Sex education in all schools. It was a great blow when this was dropped from Ed Balls Education reform and sadly it now seems to have fallen off the political radar. However, young people are still engaging in risky behaviours at an early age and often feel like no one will talk to them about it. They have questions and don't know who to ask or where to get the information. I wish it was the case that all young people could have the confidence to ask their parents and the parents would have the skills and information to provide the answers. But sadly many families do not have this and as a compassionate society we must reach out to all the young people desperate for information and advice. MP speaks out for compulsory Sex Education

I was recently asked this question and it made me think long and hard. Read my response below it. *I would like to know more about your overall goal - in other words what is it you are trying to change. Do you consider it is more about raising awareness or changing behaviour (I am sure there are elements of both) and are you clear about the changes you want to see as a result of what you do - it will be very hard to measure the effect/impact of what you are doing without knowing this. I would say that changing behaviour is my goal, firstly by changing attitudes towards sex and relationships and secondly by equipping them with skills that change their behaviour to stay safer. For me the 3 changes I want to see are - a greater recognition of the emotional impact of sexual activity - a delay of a young persons first sexual experience - a greater proportion of young people using protection correctly when they are sexually active My biggest worry is how to measure these three changes?

The 2010 British election is today and this lead me to wonder what party would have the most positive impact on Sex Education. Now I have attempted to research as best I can but have found that it is not a major manifesto point. But we do know a few things. Firstly the Labour goverment did originally propose that Sex Education should become mandetary and that parents should have their rights to remove their children removed for students in year 11. They tried to pass this on the last day of parliament and the tories blocked this. They specifically object to the clause to stop parents having the right to remove their children. Libdems haven't said a lot about the issue but it appears they did act in support of Labour on this issue. To be honest I am not sure which party will do the best job at encouraging good quality appropriate sex education. Hopefully which ever party gets in will not set us back!

One of the most confounding challenges of coordinating a Sex and Relationship Education project across a city is how to assess the impact of such a project. Working in a limited number of schools for a relatively short period of time(a couple of years) excludes any regional statistics from being directly related or representative. Also regional statistics focus on two things conception rates and STI infection rates. However, our Sex and Relationship project focus on attitudes and behaviours as much as biological consequences. It is difficult to assess the attitudes of a group. Interviews individually or in groups may work but it is very personal and questions could possibly be inappropriate. Instead of interviews we have written an anonymous quiz that attempts to evaluate both attitudes and looks at knowledge. We have used this in one school already I hope to post some of the statistical results in the near future. Below is a small 2 page quiz is all about trying to evaluate what is th...

Today I had the privilege of meeting my works key financial supporter. I could not do my job with out his kind donatitions. Well I work up early to go meet him and I've got to be honest I was nervous. Whilst I was pretty sure that he would not object to my work, I was keenly aware that the long term existance of the project could depend on this meeting. The project has garenteed funding for the next 1 and a half years. Beyond that we do not have any guarentees. In fact he has publicaly said that he will not fund the work after summer 2011. After meeting him and his wife I wish this wasn't the case. He is a fantastic guy who has a clear passion for work which makes a differance and for work which builds in sustanability. Before this meeting (and my pre-meeting prep) I had not put a lot of thought into sustanability but Chester is in a good state for sustainability. Mainly because the model we are using is to get local youth workers from local churches to be passionate about the ...

Two things surprise me regularly when I'm teaching SRE. Firstly, how much some young people know about sex. Secondly, how little some young people know about sex. Strangely this seems true across all demographics of age, culture, up bringing and economic background. Some young people just seem to have a much greater awareness of sex at a younger age and some seem to be the complete opposite. This presenst some problems when teaching SRE. I know that if I aim too basic in my session I will be irrelevant to some of the class and more worryingly they may then decide to not ask me that question that they really want to know. On the over side if I aim high I may be concussing to people in the lesson or I may give them ideas that they wouldn't have thought of before. I believe the best approach is to aim somewhere in the middle, never assuming anything. Ensuring all my language is clear and concise examplianing new terms as I use them. At the same time I aim to never let my language ...