Compulsory sex-ed is back on the UK government's agenda, but there's no evidence that it works.

Compulsory sex education won’t reduce 

rates of teenage pregnancy

by David Paton 

Proposals to force all schools to teach a compulsory sex education curriculum from primary level up and to restrict the right of parents to opt-out their children are back on the parliamentary agenda in the UK. State maintained secondary schools currently have to provide sex and relationships education, but academies and free schools do not.

Back in 2010, similar proposals to make sex education a statutory requirement for all schools were washed-up in the run up to the general election. They are now being re-introduced through a private members' bill by Green MP Caroline Lucas. The education select committee also has an ongoing inquiry into whether policy changes are needed. Yet there is little evidence from research or international comparisons that making sex education compulsory will have a big impact on the sexual health of young people.

No real impact on behaviour

There is considerable agreement among academics that teenage pregnancy rates and other indicators of sexual health are strongly correlated with factors such as poverty, educational achievement, religion and family stability. But there is less agreement over the impact of policies aimed directly at reducing unwanted pregnancy, in particular the role of school-based sex education and access to family planning services.

Although hardly any studies have found that sex education programmes lead to sustained reductions in unwanted pregnancy rates, some have been found to lead to delayed sexual initiation and higher condom use. However, an earlier review in 2002 argued that the strongest studies tended to find little or no impact on the way teenagers behave.

A 2011 survey of the most recent evaluations of mainstream sex education programmes in the UK, by sexual health expert Daniel Wight, also found “minimal effect on reported behaviour” and that none of the programmes led to reductions in unwanted pregnancies.

Population-wide studies can perhaps tell us more about the potential impact of policy than studies of individual sex education programmes. In 1999, American economist Gerald Oettinger found that some groups of teenage girls who were exposed to school-based sex education in the 1970s engaged in earlier sexual activity and had slightly higher pregnancy rates than those who had not been exposed to school sex education.

Effects of abstinence education

In an attempt to control more rigorously for what other factors might cause a teenager to engage in sexual activity, a 2006 study by American economic Joseph Sabia found sex education to have little or no effect. But he found an exception in that education centred around the use of contraceptives was associated with teenagers having sex earlier than those who had sex education based around the idea of abstinence.

The evidence specifically focusing on abstinence education is similarly mixed, with some studies finding it no more effective than “conventional” approaches to reducing unwanted pregnancy rates. But more recent papers on abstinence education by Chilean obstetrician Carlos Cabezon and Americans John Jemmott and Colin Cannonier have presented quite positive results.




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