The following article by Dr Trevor Stammers was published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2000;321:1520-1521, 16 December) and is reproduced here by kind permission. Recent trends in adolescent sexual health in the United Kingdom are cause for concern. In England alone, almost 90,000 teenagers became pregnant in 1997. Slightly fewer than 7,700 of …
Category «Sex Education»
Letter – Sex education is the responsibility of parents
Sex education is the responsibility of parents not the statutory duty of the state Sir – Calls to make sex and relationship education (SRE) a statutory part of the national curriculum (Letters, August 26) are misguided and represent a serious attempt to undermine the role of parents. There is no evidence to suggest that starting …
Letter – Offering ‘informed choices’ is inadequate
Underage pregnancies SIR – Young people have never received more information on sexual matters (Leading article, July 8), and it has never been easier for them to access contraception and the morning-after pill behind their parents’ backs. Yet under-16 conception rates stand at the same level as they did when the strategy began, and …
Letter – Parents are responsible in law for the education of their children
Sir, Robert Rhodes is mistaken in his assumption that Ed Balls’s plan to deny parents the right to withdraw their children from sex education lessons once they reach the age of 15 may be motivated by a desire to reduce teenage pregnancy rates (letter, Nov 7). In the absence of any evidence that children whose parents have opted …
Letter – Mandatory lessons on sex in primary schools
SIR – Parents and guardians have the primary responsibility for bringing up their children in accordance with their own values and culture. They may entrust the task of formal education to a school of their choice, but the overall responsibility for the upbringing of their children remains theirs. The Children, Schools and Families Bill undermines …