SRE0407
Written evidence submitted by Esteem Resource Network
1. Executive summary
1.1 Who we are
Esteem Resource Network is a project with more than 20 years’ experience in delivering interactive and dynamic workshops to young people on self-esteem, relationships and sex and providing training and support to youth workers and teachers. Through our network of educators across the UK, we reach more than 12,000 young people a year in secondary schools and other youth settings.
Our submission to the Education Select Committee is for SRE in particular as that is where our expertise lies.
We firmly believe that all young people should have access to high quality, engaging, age-appropriate, relevant and responsible relationships and sexual health education that will support them to make wise and healthy choices.
1.2 What the issue is
Although the biological elements of sex education are statutory within the National Curriculum, we feel that in many schools across the UK, not enough emphasis is placed on the relationship and emotional aspects of SRE and teaching often fails to keep up with what young people are exposed to in our digital age. In 2013, we carried out focus groups with 184 young people about their experience of SRE and the resounding response amongst the majority of the young people was that their SRE to date (prior to receiving Esteem sessions) had not been good enough.
Within the UK, 88% of parents believe that relationships and sex education should be mandatory in schools (NAHT, 2013), while 80% of teachers do not feel trained or confident delivering these lessons (NAHT, 2010). Although parents and teachers agree that SRE is important, neither group feels equipped or comfortable tackling the issues and responding to the questions of young people. In the meantime, the UK government remains hesitant over whether SRE should become part of the core curriculum and what their roles and responsibilities towards our young people will be.
This lack of clarity and consensus, from government through to schools and the home, about what information to share with young people, and at what ages, has resulted in all parties avoiding the subject altogether. Seeking to educate themselves, young people are turning to the influences of our culture, such as the internet, television, film, music lyrics and videos, and advertising, to gain knowledge and insight into relationships and sex. But although sexualised messages and content is readily available to them, clear, accessible, and relevant information is not. As a result, young people are continuing to make uninformed and damaging decisions about relationships and their sexual health.
1.3 What needs to happen:
In our experience, young people want to be able to talk about relationships and sex with trusted adults. A teacher on an INSET day we delivered in 2012 said, “SRE is a very important area – and schools often neglect to teach it. Too much emphasis on academic subjects and we don’t know how to navigate ourselves through life!”
As the following statistics show, this has got to change:
i) Although teenage conceptions in the UK have reduced over the last 10 years, the UK continues to have the highest teenage birth rate in Western Europe (UNICEF, Report Card 11, April 2013). 31,051 girls under the age of 18 in England and Wales became pregnant in 2011 (Office of National Statistics), with nearly half of these ending in legal abortion.
ii) Over 30,000 young people access treatment and care for sexually transmitted infections each year in England (Public Health England, 2013). 11-12% of these young people are likely to be re-infected within a year due to a lack in confidence in negotiating safer sex (Health Protection Agency).
iii) In a ChildLine survey (2013), 60% of 13-18 year olds said they had been asked for a sexual image or video of themselves. This, and other evidence, highlights the need to support young people as they grow up in a particularly challenging and pressurised environment.
iv) The Children’s Commissioner reported in 2013 that “A significant proportion of children and young people are exposed to or access pornography.” Linda Papadopolous (2010) in her report on sexualisation said, “The nature of online pornography is changing: it is increasingly dominated by themes of aggression, power and control, blurring the lines between consent, pleasure and violence. There is strong evidence linking consumptions of pornography with sexual behaviour”.
v) According to an NSPCC survey of 13-17 year olds in 2009, one in three girls and 16% of boys (who had been in intimate relationships) reported some form of sexual partner violence.
We believe that SRE is firstly a parental responsibility. However, parents need to be supported by schools and the community, and in actual fact many parents feel ill-equipped to have conversations about relationships and sex that cover everything that a young person needs to know, especially when it comes to staying safe online.
3. Why the status of SRE needs to be elevated within the National Curriculum:
3.1 To improve the quality of SRE that is delivered to young people across the UK
3.1.1 Evidence from our own work:
We are constantly hearing from young people in schools we work with that the quality of their SRE before we were invited into their school was very poor. We carried out a number of focus groups last year and in one school we carried out focus groups with 64 young people from Year 8 – Year 11 (July 2013).
We asked the students to indicate on a scale from 0 to 10 how important they feel lessons on sex and relationships (and puberty for Years 8 and 9) are and how good their education has been on these topics so far in their school life. Here are the results:
| Boys | Girls | Average | ||||||
| Y8 | Y9 | Y10 | Y11 | Y8 | Y9 | Y10 | Y11 |
|
Importance of SRE | 9.1 | 7.9 | 6.7 | 7.7 | 6.9 | 8.3 | 9.7 | 8.9 | 8.2 |
Quality of SRE | 5 | 4.3 | 2 | 6.7 | 4.3 | 2.3 | 8.9 | 1.3 | 4.4 |
So overall, students felt that SRE is important, yet the quality of SRE they have experienced has been mixed.
Here are some quotes from the young people in relation to these questions:
Y11 girl [about the importance of SRE]: “I think 9/10 because there are a lot of things that can happen to you if you do have sexual intercourse such as HIV so it’s important for people to learn about that before they go ahead and do certain things.”
Y9 boy: “It’s really important for people to have lessons on sex and relationships because some people will think that it isn’t important to learn about relationships and it’s just sex, but they need to learn all the right things in the right ways.”
Y8 boy: “In science in Year 7 we learnt about the anatomy and sexual intercourse. We learnt a bit about puberty, but we didn’t talk about relationships at all. Lessons on relationships would be helpful because they would help us in our future lives because when you are in a relationship there are lots of things that you need to know.”
Y10 boy: “It was best taught in primary school. In this school there is no focus on it. During science, it is just part of the curriculum and they just tell you what happens during intercourse.”
Y11 girl: “We actually haven’t learnt about it in this school at all – since Year 7 til now.”
Girls and boys in all year groups agreed and commented that the best teaching they had had around SRE was at primary school, and that there has been little or no teaching in secondary school around relationships and emotions or risks of sexual activity or unhealthy relationships. We also find this to be the case in other schools we work in.
We have since delivered an Esteem INSET day to 7 teachers in this school and have started to support teachers in delivering workshops.
We find that schools really appreciate our focus on building self-esteem in the young people and helping them to understand their value and worth and the value and worth of others and we believe this should be the starting point in any SRE programme.
3.1.2 Evidence from other sources:
In 2012, OFSTED published a report called ‘Not yet good enough – PSHE in schools.’ This report stated that SRE required improvement in almost half of secondary schools. Students reported that there was too much emphasis on the mechanics of reproduction and not enough focus on the emotional and relationship side of sex or topics such as sexual abuse and pornography. The report states that,
“When asked what would have made PSHE education lessons more useful, the following comments, among others, were made:
‘Rape culture. What to look for in a healthy relationship.’ Girl Year 12
‘The influence of the media such as porn on people’s views of sex and the human body.’ Boy Year 10”
The UK Youth Parliament Survey, "Are you getting it?" (2008) which surveyed more than 20,000 young people under 18 found that: 61% of boys and 70% of girls over the age of 17 reported not having received any information about personal relationships at school.
Brook carried out a survey amongst young people in 2011 and found that
“47% of secondary school pupils think their school’s Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) does not meet their needs. The lack of relevant sex and relationships education in schools and at home means 81% of teenagers are getting most of their sexual health knowledge from less reliable sources, leaving them vulnerable and ill-prepared to navigate their way through relationships”. They go on to say, “SRE fares particularly badly when it comes to teaching pupils about relationships, with only 6% saying they get the information on relationships that they need in SRE lessons”.
http://www.brook.org.uk/index.php/what-s-new/latest-news?view=article&id=91
Young people must have the opportunity to explore the components that contribute to a healthy relationship and to think about the place of sex in a relationship.
3.2 To ensure that teachers receive the training and support they need to deliver SRE confidently and effectively
In 2012, Ofsted reported that teaching of PSHE education required improvement in
38% of secondary schools and that too many teachers lacked expertise in teaching
sensitive and controversial issues. The reason for this is because, “subject-specific
training and support were often inadequate. In 20% of schools, staff had received
little or no training to teach PSHE education. Teaching was not good in any of these
schools.”
As a result of conversations we had with teachers in 2010, we developed an
INSET day to equip teachers with the knowledge, confidence and resources to deliver quality SRE.
In an INSET day we delivered in October 2013, the teachers said they would recommend the training to other schools because:
- “It expands the teachers’ knowledge on lots of the subjects surrounding sex.”
- “Most schools struggle with the delivery of good sex and relationships education.”
- “Most teachers and parents would find it really difficult to organise SRE from nothing, and this session just sets it out perfectly.”
- “All schools should offer this type of training for staff as these topics are seen as ‘taboo’.”
- “It’s good to have proper training – it gives confidence.”
From the response we receive from the INSET days we deliver, we see value that teachers place on SRE training and the confidence if gives them afterwards. Even if SRE is not made statutory, we would ask the Department for Education to consider providing schools with specific budgets for specialist SRE training so that they feel better equipped and resourced to deliver the teaching that young people need in this area.
We have found that teachers are sometimes wary of delivering SRE in case they are expected to teach in a way that contradicts faith beliefs and values they may hold or promote something they don’t agree with or go into detail they are not comfortable with. One teacher in an INSET day we delivered in October admitted that, “I was a little concerned about what the training would be like.” However she went on to say, “But you guys certainly created a safe and informative environment. It was very informative with lots of practical activities to fully equip us.”
It is important that teachers are given as much support as possible to deliver quality SRE so they can speak about sensitive topics in a balanced way without having to contradict their own values and beliefs whilst honouring the fact that the students may have different and varied values and beliefs.
Ofsted’s report noted that outside speakers can make a valuable contribution to a PSHE programme and if SRE is made statutory, schools should still have the ability to choose external providers that reflect their own values.
4. The supplementary guidance on SRE
We welcomed the publication of the supplementary guidance on SRE. This was initiated and written by the Sex Education Forum (of which we are a member), the PSHE Association (of which we are a member) and Brook, rather than being a Government initiative.
To add to what the guidance says about the importance of addressing pornography with SRE, here are some comments from the young people we ran focus groups with in July 2013 regarding their thoughts on whether pornography should be addressed in schools:
Year 10 boys:
“We all want teaching on it because people have never spoken to us about any dangers. We all just think it’s fun, but we don’t really know anything.”
“We would like to learn about the effects of it and how it can lead to people copying what they see and that can be dangerous. Some people will think that it is real and it can be addictive.”
Year 10 girls:
“There have been times where boys literally watch in in lessons. It’s not a big deal, they’re just laughing at it.
“Some of the girls are as bad as the boys, but not as much.”
Year 11 boys:
“We would like to learn about it, but it would have to be delivered in the right was so that it doesn’t cause embarrassment for teachers or students.”
“It would be good to have education around the issues that there are with pornography. It effects people’s thoughts about sex. Makes people want sex at a younger age and creates the wrong image of sex. Some people think that it’s real life.”
Year 11 girls:
“I think the boys need to learn how to calm down on the porn that they watch, because a lot of boys in our year group use it.”
5. How the effectiveness of SRE should be measured
Ofsted’s report, ‘Not yet good enough – PSHE education in schools’, states that, “By
far the weakest aspect of teaching was the assessment of pupils’ learning which
was often less robust for PSHE education than for other subjects. In too many schools,
teachers did not check or build on pupils’ previous knowledge which resulted in
them repeating topics, and they had lower expectations of the quality of pupils’
work in PSHE education than for the same pupils in other subjects.”
In the DfEE SRE guidance (2000), SRE is described as having three main elements:
i) attitudes and values, ii) personal and social skills, iii) knowledge and understanding.
We measure the effectiveness of our workshops by measuring changes in these
elements. We do this through using feedback forms either before and after a course,
or just at the end of a session. For example, in terms of personal and social skills, we
measure changes in how confident the students feel about making decisions about
relationships and sex as a result of the session.
From our experience, SRE is greatly improved when the young people themselves have been involved in designing the programme. Our focus groups with young people last year have made a significant contribution to the development of our work and we would recommend that schools involve their students in developing their SRE programme and finding out what the young people would like to learn about as it opens up a great discussion from which to roll out sessions.
June 2014
References
- NAHT (National Association of Head Teachers) (2013) ‘Survey data on parents’ views on the teaching of issues surrounding pornography in schools’
- NAHT (2010) ‘Sex and relationship education: View from teachers, parents, and governors’
- Public Health England (2013) ‘Public Health Outcomes’
- UNICEF (2013) ‘Child well-being in rich countries: a comparative review’
- Office for National Statistics (2011) ‘Conceptions in England and Wales’
- Children’s Commissioner (2013) ‘Basically porn in everywhere’
- Papadopoulos L (2010). Sexualisation of Young People Review. The Home Office
- NSPCC (2009), ‘Partner exploitation and violence in intimate teenage relationships.’
3. Why the status of SRE needs to be elevated within the National Curriculum:
- UK Youth Parliament (June 2008), SRE: are you getting it?
- OFSTED (May 2013) ‘Not yet good enough; personal, social, health and economic education in schools.”