If you’d told me 12 years ago that sex education in the United Kingdom would still be of the same lamentable standard that I experienced, I’d have struggled to believe you. The year I turned 15, my classmates were becoming single parents. Some were the sole custodians of a single bag of Tesco value flour with a face drawn on it and an ironic given name, provided to them as part of a “parenting” experiment conducted by the school. Others would be giving birth to a real life baby, later in the year, and would not come back to take their GCSEs. It was clear to everyone that the school’s efforts were too little, too late – not to mention anything but informative. We had learned a hell of lot more from late night episodes of Eurotrash, Sexcetera, and the free three-minute previews on the adult satellite channels, than we ever had at school (and most of those shows didn’t reveal even a scrap of flange).
Now that we’ve moved beyond the dial-up era and have bid farewell to the quirks of late Nineties sexual programming (there always seemed to be a lot of bondage), teenagers are much more likely to rely on internet porn for their information, something that has forced sex education campaigners to raise their voices. Thankfully, it appears that the message is finally getting through to government. Today the Education Select Committee released its inquiry report, which recommends that age appropriate sex and relationships education be made statutory subjects in both primary and secondary schools. Much like a drunken one night-stand, it has been a long time coming.
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