Sex and Relationships Education

A Step-by-Step Guide for Teachers

Simon Blake

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134141777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book will enable and assist teachers responsible for organizing and delivering Sex and Relationships Education. It draws together the best available practice to support teachers in developing policy and classroom practice. It begins by looking at general principles and then focuses on primary, secondary and special schools as well as pupil referral units. These chapters will provide a toolkit of ideas and approaches that teachers can use in the classroom.

Included are practical exercises that can be done alone or in staff meetings to prepare yourself or a colleague to deliver SRE, a glossary of terms that will support you in answering children's and young people's questions, advice on choosing, developing and using resources, and a list of useful organizations and websites.

The book will be particularly helpful to PSHE coordinators, Health Promotion Units, National Healthy School Standard coordinators and SRE teachers in schools. LEA Advisors and Inspectors, and anyone involved in training and supporting teachers, will also find this a useful guide.

What is PSHE and Citizenship?

PSHE and Citizenship is the planned provision for personal and social development. It helps children and young people develop a secure sense of identity and helps them to function well in the world (SEF 2001). PSHE and Citizenship includes three elements:

• the acquisition of accessible, relevant and age-appropriate information;

• clarification and development of attitudes and values that support self-esteem and are positive to health and well-being;

• the development of personal and social skills to enable emotional development and interaction with others as well as making positive health choices and actively participating in society.

Effective PSHE and Citizenship underpins learning and can contribute significantly to school improvement. It is provided across the curriculum in all subject areas as well as in planned programmes of PSHE and Citizenship. It includes areas such as emotional health and well-being, sex and relationships, drugs, citizenship and careers/vocational education, diet and exercise and safety. School-based PSHE and Citizenship complements and helps children and young people make sense of what is implicitly or explicitly learnt at home from parents, carers, family, friends and the wider society.

Children and young people need an integrated provision of PSHE and Citizenship. Often there is a tendency to focus on specific topics; advocates of specific topics such as sex and relationships and drugs demand more time and more guidance. Approaching PSHE in this topic-based fashion means there is a tendency to focus on information provision and ignore the co-ordinated skills development and values exploration that underpin all personal and social development work (Blake and Frances 2001).

The Sex Education Forum believes that all SRE should be delivered within a safe and supportive environment, and within the broad context of PSHE and Citizenship.

What is SRE?

SRE is a lifelong process of acquiring information, developing skills and forming positive beliefs and attitudes about sex, sexuality, relationships and feelings (Sex Education Forum 1999). SRE (as part of PSHE and Citizenship) should support positive levels of self-esteem and the development of emotional resourcefulness in children and young people. Self-esteem is the way that we feel about ourselves. It is not static; our self-esteem varies throughout our lives depending on circumstances and events. Emotional resourcefulness is the ability to:

• use our thinking skills together with our emotions to guide our behaviour positively;

• manage and respond to negative life events effectively.

Who is SRE for?

SRE is for all children and young people. Development of policy and practice should take into account the needs of boys as well as girls, those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and heterosexual, those with physical, learning or emotional difficulties and those with a religious, faith or cultural tradition (Sex Education Forum 1999).

Children's and young people's participation underpins all SRE work. To ensure that it meets their needs, they need to participate in the planning and delivery of SRE. We need to find out from them what they want and need to know. This will help to ensure that it meets the needs of ALL children and young people and be relevant to their needs. As one young woman said, ‘I think that it is completely wrong that you [adults] think you have the right to tell us what we want to hear. Why don't you find out what we want to know about?’ If we engage effectively with children and young people, it is likely that we are going to meet their needs and address their concerns.

Why is SRE in schools important?

Children and young people tell us that they want to learn about relationships, sex and sexuality

They are particularly keen to develop emotional and social skills necessary for decision-making, negotiating and developing friendships and relationships and to explore ‘real-life dilemmas’ (Sex Education Forum 2000). For some children, particularly boys and those from black and minority ethnic communities, schools may be their main source of information about sex and relationships (Holland 1994; Lenderyou and Ray 1997).

They are particularly keen to develop emotional and social skills necessary for decision-making, negotiating and developing friendships and relationships and to explore ‘real-life dilemmas’ (Sex Education Forum 2000). For some children, particularly boys and those from black and minority ethnic communities, schools may be their main source of information about sex and relationships (Holland 1994; Lenderyou and Ray 1997).

They are particularly keen to develop emotional and social skills necessary for decision-making, negotiating and developing friendships and relationships and to explore ‘real-life dilemmas’ (Sex Education Forum 2000). For some children, particularly boys and those from black and minority ethnic communities, schools may be their main source of information about sex and relationships (Holland 1994; Lenderyou and Ray 1997).

For many children and young people, sex and relationships education:

• Begins too late — often after they have started puberty, have experienced sexual feelings and sexual attraction and often after they have begun sexual activity.

• Has an inadequate amount of time allocated to it and therefore does not cover the wide range of issues including skill development and attitude clarification; instead it focuses on the information elements.

• Is too biological in nature — so the emphasis often lies in reproduction and biology and SRE does not provide adequate time to think about emotions, relationships and ‘dilemmas’. ‘Schools give a more technical opinion rather than an emotional one and when you are actually going through a situation to do with sex or relationships, it is more to do with emotions’ (young woman, aged 14).

• Is not taken seriously enough by teachers and so pupils do not take it seriously either. This means they do not get the learning opportunities they want.

‘Sometimes the teachers are not organised and they just say, do this worksheet, it is not fair’ (boy aged 10). ‘They don’t seem to want to do it, it is not what they are interested in, so we just bunk it or talk at the back, we don't take it seriously' (young woman, aged 15).

Children and young people have many good ideas about how to improve SRE in their school and we should offer structured opportunities to obtain their views. This can ensure that teachers and pupils work together to review and further develop the SRE curriculum. As one young woman, aged 14, said, ‘It needs to be of the time, and so we need to be involved in making decisions about what is covered.’

Parents want schools to do it

In the most recent large-scale study in this country over 94 per cent of parents support school-based SRE, and this is confirmed by smaller-scale studies (HEA/NFER 1994). Less than 1 per cent withdraw their children from sex and relationships education (Ofsted 2002).

Although parents often want to talk to their children about sex and relationships, they feel ill equipped to do so and therefore look to schools to either partially or completely do the job (Dix 1996). ‘Some parents feel uncomfortable talking about it with their child and some just leave it to the school to do, which does not really work’ (young man, aged 12).

SRE supports learning

Early findings from the National Healthy School Standard suggest that PSHE and Citizenship developed within the context of a healthy school positively affects achievement across the curriculum, improves behaviour and reduces truancy (Rivers et al. 2000).

It is a legal requirement for schools to provide SRE

The National Curriculum (QCA/DfEE 1999) is underpinned by a stated belief in education, at home and at school, as a route to the spiritual, social, cultural, physical and moral development, and thus the well-being, of the individual. It has two broad aims that provide an essential context within which schools can develop their own curriculum:

1. The school curriculum should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn.

2. The school curriculum should aim to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and should prepare all pupils for the opportunities and responsibilities of life.

In summary, these aims ensure that the curriculum enables pupils to develop the knowledge and understanding of their own and different beliefs in an equal opportunities framework. Pupils will be able to understand their rights and responsibilities, and will develop enduring values and integrity and autonomy and respect for their environment and their communities. SRE promotes pupils' self-esteem and emotional development and helps them form and maintain satisfying relationships.

PSHE and Citizenshi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• About the Sex Education Forum
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What is PSHE and Citizenship?
• 2 A whole-school approach to SRE
• 3 Developing and delivering SRE
• 4 Meeting the particular needs of all children and young people
• 5 Sex and relationships education in the primary schoo
• 6 Sex and relationships education in the secondary school
• 7 Sex and relationships education for children and young people with learning disabilities
• 8 Sex and relationships education in Pupil Referral Units
• 9 Professional development
• Resources list
• An audit tool for reviewing sex and relationships education provision
• Glossary of terms
• Useful organisations
• References
• Index