General Article Sex education

Topic Selected: Sexual Health
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There’s something wrong with sex education in this country. There must be. The results speak for themselves. The highest number of teenage pregnancies in the whole of Western Europe

(45, 873 in 2008). 20,000 girls under 18 undergoing an abortion last year. And high numbers of sexually transmitted infections (STIs); recent figures show 15- to 24-year-olds are still the group most affected by STIs in the UK. Dr Gwenda Hughes, head of the Health Protection Agency’s STI section, says: ‘The impact of STI diagnoses is still unacceptably high in this group. Studies suggest those infected may be more likely to have unsafe sex or lack the skills and confidence to negotiate safer sex.’ Perhaps the ‘relationships’ aspect of Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) is seriously lacking.

Results from a campaign called Let’s Talk About Sex, set up by 18-year-old Shereece Marcantonio, indicate that 40% of young people believe their sex education was poor. Shereece’s campaign, run in conjunction wit...

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