Sex education...at age 5.

BBC Education wrote:Lessons about personal, social and health matters including sex and relationships will be compulsory in all England's schools from ages five to 16.

But the government is setting up a review of how best to achieve this, saying there are "complicated issues".

Schools Minister Jim Knight said this would factor in the ethos of schools, pupils' needs and parents' values.

A BBC poll of more than 1,000 people found two thirds would support sex lessons from the age of 11.

Reviews of education about sex and relationships and about drugs and alcohol were ordered after ministers said teaching was "patchy".

What they have not yet given is the detail of what compulsory personal, social and health education (PSHE) will involve.

New guidance

The Department for Children, Schools and Families said the review of sex lessons had identified "a need to challenge the perception that sex and relationships education happened in a 'moral vacuum' in schools and says that parents and schools can and should work together to decide how best topics should be taught."

It said updated guidance would also be produced covering the content of the PSHE curriculum, based on the existing non-statutory programme.

Lessons should be "age appropriate". In primary schools, Sir Jim Rose would look at how PSHE should best be delivered as part of his ongoing review of the curriculum.

The new review of how to make PSHE compulsory will be led by a London head teacher, Sir Alasdair MacDonald.

Mr Knight told BBC News: "We are not suggesting that five and six-year-olds should be taught sex.

"What we are saying is we need to improve in particular the relationship education, improve the moral framework and moral understanding around which we then talk about sex later on in a child's education."

'Wickedness'

He said what schools would have to follow would be a high-level "programme of study". But it would still be up to schools to decide what to teach.

"Faith groups for example will want to produce supplementary guidance on top of our guidance, in order to say to their own schools ... how they should then deliver that programme of study in a way that's sympathetic to their moral beliefs, their faith beliefs in those schools."

The Catholic Education Service for England and Wales said it supported the priority given to establishing a "values context" for all sex and relationships teaching, the recognition of the importance of the role of parents, and the clear expectation that lessons would be shaped by Catholic teaching.

The chief executive of the sexual health charity Brook, Simon Blake, said the news that PSHE was to be a statutory part of the national curriculum was "absolutely brilliant".

He added: "Now, at last, we can put the systems in place to give teachers and others the training and support they need to work effectively in partnership with children, young people and their parents."

The head of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), John Dunford, has written to the government complaining that secondary schools have only just begun implementing major changes to the curriculum including highly regarded but non-statutory material on PSHE.

"In ASCL's view it would be extremely detrimental to make PSHE compulsory or to change the revised secondary curriculum orders in any way at this point," he wrote.

It was not just a subject on the timetable.

"It is part of the ethos of the school, helping to develop the young person in ways that schools deem most appropriate to their circumstances.

"It should not be the subject to further central prescription and certainly not compulsion."

KKLEIN wrote:I don't know about you, but I think it's absolutely ridiculous. No doubt as ridiculous as the impending puns...

"We are not suggesting that five and six-year-olds should be taught sex."

BobbyDigital wrote:The UK is outta control in terms of teenage pregnancy, STDs etc. We gotta try a different approach because what they are doing now ain't working.

Cal wrote:So, any blokes here fancy becoming a primary school teacher? Good luck with that...

BobbyDigital wrote:The UK is outta control in terms of teenage pregnancy, STDs etc. We gotta try a different approach because what they are doing now ain't working.

game_pro wrote:Did anyone find sex education in school useful?

It seemed a giant waste of time to me.

Jaxley wrote:I'm sure, since it says "start" at 5 years old, that it wouldn't be anything too graphic. It'd probably just start with telling the kids that it's nothing to do with pelicans, and that their parents used certain body parts together to make their child. I'd imagine it'd be something like that.

MCN wrote:

Jaxley wrote:I'm sure, since it says "start" at 5 years old, that it wouldn't be anything too graphic. It'd probably just start with telling the kids that it's nothing to do with pelicans, and that their parents used certain body parts together to make their child. I'd imagine it'd be something like that.

I was listening to this on the news earlier, and it starts off not being about sex at all, but about how family works, and how friendships and relationships are developed. Then, from about age 7, they start to be taught the differences between boys and girls, and then later, when they stat secondary school, they start going into the more detailed stuff.