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...

Yesterday I was invited to speak on the Chester university Christian youth work course all about the importance of sex and relationship education, especially for youth worker. We got to cover lots of great stuff. I promised to post on here links to a couple of things I mentioned. If you are interested in attending the training I mentioned email me at Gareth@cscw.org.uk  The Sex Education Forum's guide to SRE within the youth service   The Department of Health recently published  Sexual health improvement framework

I have started teaching a lesson on the media's portrayal of Sex and Relationship. The lesson focuses on movies, TV shows and visual pornography. But with all the media hype around 50 Shades of Grey I wanted to do a small scale survey of young people I work with to see if the hype had any grounding in reality. Are young people reading it and is it impacting young people?  At the end of a session looking at the Distortion of Media I handed out some small surveys. Just half a dozen questions and a space for general feedback. I did this with two year groups both mixed gender. A group of year 10 students (aged 14-15) and a group of year 12 students (aged 16-17). With the older group I also asked if the book had encouraged them to experiment with "BDSM/fetish/kinky stuff" but talking with school staff it was decided not to ask that direct question to the year 10 groups. Below are some of the figures from my study, please note it is very small scale and may not ref...

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" ...

Please make use of all these notes/links from my session today at the Esteem Resource Network Conference looking at the topic "Let’s talk about porn" Firstly my presentation Why talk about Porn? on Prezi 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 ...

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

Working as a sex and relationship educator means I am always learning new things. I was reading this article  on the BBC website looking at  several new outbreaks of syphilis among heterosexual teenagers in the UK. For me this is an especially worrying development because this is not the only STI that is getting ready for a come back. It has also been recorded that gonorrhea  is becoming resistant to antibiotics . HIV also seems poised for a resurgence  in the EU. If STIs continue to develop and return bigger and badder then before the role of sexual health workers could become more vital then ever.  In my work we focus on both the emotional, social and physical aspects of both sex and relationships. It is a key unique theme of our work to help young people deal with the emotional side, an element that some providers skip to target the biological risks. Whilst I feel this is damaging in the long term I can see the point in r...