DRAFT Grace - Sex Ed

LGBTQ youth face challenges with sex education in schools, particularly for transgender youth. Sex education provides information on sex, relationships, and sexual health. However, there is a lack of research on transgender adolescents and sex education, resulting in narrow and inadequate information. Trans youth have reported fears and lack of guidance on intimacy and sexual activity. Sex education for boys is often non-existent, leaving girls with the responsibility of knowing what not to do. Split classes also limit access to relevant information. Many studies have found that transgender issues are not covered, leaving trans youth feeling isolated and stressed. The UK has introduced a new compulsory sex education scheme called RSHE, which aims to be inclusive and representative. The curriculum covers topics such as online safety, puberty, consent, and LGBTQ+ families. However, there may be challenges in ensuring teachers reinforce this education. Some parents have protested against A key issue for many LGBTQ youth is the sex education that is provided in schools, especially for trans youth. Sex education is basically educating people on a variety of topics about sex and sexuality. This is mainly provided in schools but can be found elsewhere too, such as online or family. It gives people advice on themselves, partners, the community and sexual health. For context of what I'm about to talk about, this is all sex education within schools. In 2018, UNESCO published a report which listed the high quality sex education benefits that people receive. 53% made less risky decisions and 40% increased their use of condoms and contraception. If there are all these great benefits to sex education in schools, how come there's barely any research done on transgender adolescents and sex education? In fact, any kind of sex education has excluded any form of talk about gender identity or transgender people. This has resulted in it being extremely narrow and reductive. A study from Bradford et al. in 2018 spoke about how trans youth reported that they had major fears around intimacy due to no advice being available to them on how to engage in sexual activity as a transgender person. This is much more apparent in classes that were split into biological male and female. The boys' classes were always reported as taking barely any time, nothing on sex, gender and sexuality. I find it interesting that sex education with boys is always basically non-existent and that the girls bear the brunt of making sure they know what not to do wrong. By having the split classes as well, this doesn't allow everyone to access all the information necessary to them. Jones et al. in 2016 said that when researching Australian trans youth, they found that issues germane to transgender students were not covered, which left all of their paths to look up not informative. Toad of et al. in 2020 also found similar things where there was no discussion about trans bodies, which trans people then have to find their own resources relevant to their life and experiences. It just leaves a feeling of isolation, anxiety, stress and anger. This is why it's so important for young people to be informed. It's remandatory that everyone learns how to be safe and healthy and thankfully the UK is moving forward with new guidelines for sex education being representative of the world we live in today. In 2020, a new compulsory sex education scheme was released. RSHE, which stands for Relationship, Sex and Health Education, must be used all primary and secondary schools. The new primary school curriculum includes education on staying safe online, puberty, menstruation and many others. They must also teach about different families, for example, having two parents that are women. And the secondary school curriculum covers topics like consent, online abuse, harassment and many others too. A few people who have reported to STILL will explain that the only time same-sex relationships were ever discussed at school was when there was a debate about whether or not it was okay to be gay. This just shows what a major improvement these new guidelines are. Another person spoke about how it was definitely a positive thing without inclusive education so many LGBTQ plus young people feel isolated or even unwanted in school. We have very clearly come a long way with this new scheme from Section 28 where any discussions of same-sex relationships or sexuality were completely banned. However, from my own personal experience and many others probably, the likelihood of teachers making sure that this is reinforced is potentially quite low. I was provided with no same-sex education in my secondary school and unfortunately was left with only online sources and what had been taught in primary school. You would hope that teachers do make sure this is reinforced though as it is really important for children and their health and safety. There has also been some backlash reported as well because of the new scheme. A lot of calls from STILL NORTH said that the new scheme has caused some uproar with parents and has led to protests outside of schools, particularly primary schools. This is mainly due to people's faith and goes against the parents' rights of what the children should be learned about. Unfortunately, this has only happened to a small number of schools and the majority of responses have been positive so far. It's just such a shame that there are parents out there who would want to take this opportunity away from their own children. There have also been a couple of recommendations that should be implemented into the new scheme. Total for L2021 spoke about how there should be more of a use of trans-inclusive language in sex education, so not gendered anatomy and biological processes, turning away from using girl-boy bodies and girl puberty versus boy puberty, and more use of non-gendered pronouns such as seen there. There's also actually a preference for transgender people to deliver that certain part of sex education. This is due to them having a more personal experience with it and actually being able to properly educate people on a topic that they 1. know a lot about and 2. have had their own experience with it. Hopefully when reviewing the scheme and looking for improvements, these recommendations will be tucked into place to make sure that everyone feels included.