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...

After getting a brush off answer to start with I'm starting to get better response from my MP about why he does not vote for teaching young people about Consent.  This is just a short update on my previous post on my MP ( Stephen Mosley )  voting against Clause 20 which would have made SRE compulsory and explicitly made it clear we need to educate young people about Consent.  This sentence is at least a genuine answer, he is claiming their was not sufficient evidence and reasons. Now immediately after reading his reply I wanted to push all the evidence I could find at him so he could realise how wrong he was and how right it would have been to vote Yes and if wants more evidence I can direct him to loads. When tweeting about this the Sex education Forum replied offering help. @blindfishideas sounds like you are preparing your reply... There is so much evidence that SRE works.... http://t.co/5mJyXiyKYN — Sex Education Forum (@...

On the 11th of June the commons voted against making Sex and Relationship Education a compulsory part  of the national curriculum and specifically this amendment including the following "(1) For the purposes of this Part, personal, social and health education (“PSHE”) shall include sex and relationship education, including information about same-sex relationships, sexual violence, domestic violence and sexual consent. " My MP for Chester, Stephen Mosley was one of the MP who voted against this clause. You can read a good briefing on why this clause was so important here   by the sex education forum. This was a key opportunity to get SRE into the heart of what schools need to be providing. But MPs voted not to help young people on this issue and my MP was one of those who voted against. If you want to read more about the no vote, what it means and why it matters you can read Brook here  or read this blog post exploring how the clause may still have life in it ...

Treating the Sex Ed past of america as a learning opportunity Just posting this info graphic by a guy called G reg Voakes  who contacted me letting me know it was online to be shared (thank you). Whilst it is focused on the USA lots of the statistics are very informative for our work in Chester and the UK. I have always thought about the USA as a grand experiment in SRE approaches, we different approaches applied in entire states. But the experiment should be wrapped up. I think that it has conclusively proven that abstinence only education is not effective and that condom only education is not enough. We need comprehensive education that covers it all from the right to say no, emotional well being, relationships, STIs and contraceptives. (plus in my opinion, sex and technology for the next generation)  Created by: PublicHealthDegree.com

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 forgotte...