81% of secondary school pupils aged 14-18 claim that most of their understanding about sex comes from the internet, television and friends.
Worse, in studies by the young person’s sexual advice service, Brook, almost half of the country’s secondary pupils stated that they felt the sex education provided at school was poor with a lack of relevant information. Shockingly, 5% citied pornography as their main source of information.
The key point here of course is not whether the approach being used in the schools is “poor” or not – but rather that the youngsters perceive it as poor.
In such a situation it is often helpful to have a complete re-think as to how the subject can be taught, and this is what we have done with a series of four lessons that tackle questions related to young people, the media and sexual identities.
Of course all approaches must teach reproduction in the biological sense and provide sex education as part of sex and relationship education.
But as you will know, there is no set SRE policy and this can make things incredibly difficult in the classroom as you are placed in the invidious position of having to provide better sex education without the support to do so.
One way to face the findings of the Brook study is to place a greater emphasis placed on real life situations, emotions and the impact of media such as Facebook, Twitter and ‘sexting’.
iTeachingResources have worked with Dawn Clark, a practicing trainee psychologist, psychotherapist and researcher with special interest in young people and sexually risky or harmful behaviours to produce just such materials.
The new package of sex education lesson plans from iTeachingResources priced at £49.95 is split into a series of four sessions and full details of the lessons can be found at http://www.iteachingresources.com/lessons/secondary-school/pshe-resources/sre-resources where they can be purchases and downloaded straight away. If you quote reference HH12SRE when you buy you will gain a 5% discount on the order.
For further information, contact info@iteachingresources.com or telephone 0113 2660880