UK Report: Lack of sex education a ticking time bomb, councils warn

A lack of sex and relationships education (SRE) in some of England's secondary schools is creating a "ticking sexual health time bomb", councils say.

Sex education should be compulsory in all state secondary schools, the Local Government Association (LGA) believes.

It says pupils are not being prepared for adulthood and so are vulnerable to sexually transmitted infections.

Ministers say they are looking at how all pupils can have access to good SRE.

The LGA says age-appropriate SRE should be an essential part of the curriculum for all young people, stressing that parents should still have the choice to take their children out.

But without access to accurate information, pupils are not being adequately prepared for adulthood, the association warns.

It says official figures show there were 78,066 new diagnoses of sexually transmitted infections among 15 to 19-year-olds in England in 2015 and 141,060 among 20 to 24-year-olds.

Local authorities, which have responsibility for public health, budget around £600m a year for sexual health, it added.

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Young people's dissatisfaction with SRE

• "A lot of us are turning 16 and it's legal to have intercourse, we need to be educated about signs of an abusive relationship emotionally." 15-year-old girl
• "Sex was still regarded as a taboo subject and the teachers seemed uncomfortable talking about it. The whole concept was approached purely biologically with no regards to relationships at all and was pushed into a few lessons at the end of term alongside drugs education." 15-year-old boy
• "I was sexually abused and no-one told me what was done to me was wrong. We got stranger danger and how to cross the road and that was it. He was my granddad. I didn't like it but didn't know it was wrong but thought I should be embarrassed as I thought it was my fault. If I had known it was wrong and that I could say something and someone had listened, it might have stopped earlier or I might have told before I did." 16-year-old girl

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