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.

Comments

A RSE reading list

Sometimes people ask me what reading I recommend around RSE, so I thought I would put together a bit of a list. Key (free) articles and reports Young people’s RSE UK poll Sex Education Forum (2018) RSE outcome variations due to facilitator differences Young et al (2018) What do young people think about their school-based sex and relationship education? A qualitative synthesis of young people's views and experiences Pound et al. (2016) Review of sexual abuse in schools and college s Ofsted (2021) National and International RSE Guidance UNESCO international guidance on RSE UNESCO (2018) England Department for Education full guidance on statutory relationships education, relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education Department for Education (2019) Wales Curriculum for Wales guidance and code for Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) (Consultation stage) Welsh Government (2021) Scotland Guidance for teachers on the conduct of teaching relationships, sex

Sources and reading from " 5 cool things AI can do for your youth work (and what's coming next)" workshop

Thank you if you came to my workshop at NYMW 2023 about how youth workers might consider using AI within their work. Obviously there is a lot of areas we could have looked at. We only scratched the surface, especially around the ethics. But with the current attention on generative AI I hope it was useful. Below I have included both a copy of my slides and links to some further reading/research about the topic. Slides Download a .pdf of the slides here Edited further reading and research list Atlas of AI (2022) Crawford *. A good book about ethical aspects Automating Youth Work: youth workers views on AI (2023) Pawluczuk . EU study into the attitude of youthworkers towards AI Blood in the Machine (2023) Merchant *. Who were the Luddites and why did they hate new technology Here's What Ethical AI Really Means (2023) Philosophy Tube . Long form video essay about the ethical aspects of AI, especially in regards to the creative arts How AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard work (2023) C

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. Goedele Liekens with her charges in Sex in Class. Photograph: Matt Squire 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 f

Blindfish RSE

Search This Blog