The Government should force academies to teach sex education through a contractural requirement, charity argues.
The Terrence Higgins Trust has called on Whitehall to ensure the Education for All Bill makes sex and relationship education (SRE) compulsory in primary and secondary academies.
The trust has published a new report, entitled SRE: Shh…No Talking, which found SRE to be inadequate or absent in many schools.
Their survey of over 900 young people aged 16-24 discovered half of the respondents rated the SRE they received in school as either ‘poor’ or ‘terrible’ and just 2% rated it as ‘excellent’ and only 10% rated it as ‘good’.
It found one in seven respondents had not received any SRE at all and over half (61%) received SRE just once a year or less, despite 99% of those who took part in the survey thinking SRE should be mandatory in all schools.
The survey also revealed 75% of young people were not taught about consent and three out of five respondents either didn’t remember receiving information on HIV in school (32%) or didn’t receive information on HIV in school (27%).
The Terrence Higgins Trust found education on LGBT and gender issues was also lacking. 95% of the survey respondents had not learned about LGBT sex and relationships, and 97% missed out on any discussion around gender identity.
Nearly all (97%) of the young people surveyed thought SRE should be LGBT inclusive.
‘We believe SRE should be part of the statutory national curriculum, as part of a broader programme of PSHE,’ the trust’s website said.
‘We will continue to fight for this, even though the current government do not want to deliver on it.’
