Sex education in schools: it's just bananas

The reproductive cycle of a pea or a roll of sticky tape means very little to a young person thinking about sex and relationships for the first time. Why are so many children not being taught about consent or sexuality?

‘They blindfolded us, had us spin around & then put a condom on a banana.’
Photograph: Alamy

What do sticky tape, lily pads and bananas have in common? They have all been used to educate children about sex.

When people started discussing their personal experiences of school sex and relationships education (SRE) on Twitter this week as part of the #SREnow campaign, the responses were, well, eye-opening. One person described being taught the “sex life of a pea” and having to extrapolate from there. Another was instructed to write “I am Catholic” on her AS-level biology exam paper if a question about contraception came up. Together, the hundreds of tweets revealed a stark picture of the information young people receive about relationships.

Some were so bad they were funny:

!!!!!!!!!!!!! (@MoonbabyHorton)

#SREnow we had packing tape put on our arms and ripped off to simulate what sex was going to be like emotionally/physically

But funny, poignant or devastating, what the responses all revealed was how urgently we need to get our act together and sort out comprehensive, compulsory SRE in all schools.

Let me save those poised below the line some time here and say, straight from the off, that of course these experiences are anecdotal. We can’t verify how long ago the people tweeting left school, or whether their education took place in the UK. A few tweeters paid tribute to excellent SRE, and some schools are already stepping up. But while the snapshot suggested by these anecdotes is compelling, we don’t need to rely on them to gauge the scale of the problem. The facts speak for themselves.

It’s great that some parents discuss these issues with their children, but we can’t guarantee they all will. 750,000 children already witness domestic violence each year, and many grow up in homes where they might get the message that violence in relationships is the norm. Some parents describe feeling unable to discuss these issues, or find it difficult to know where to start. Schools provide young people with guidance about plenty of other important life lessons, such as healthy eating, so why not give them similar support on the universal topic of human relationships? It’s too important to leave to chance.

The idea that children should be given guidance and information on these issues seems so sensible that many people are shocked to hear it isn’t already on the curriculum. But it’s currently not compulsory for schools to teach young people about sexual consent, healthy relationships, or issues such as online pornography or abuse.

As I talk to pupils at school after school, the impression of confusion and misinformation around sex is potent. At some schools, girls describe being held down in the playground and groped. At others, I am confidently told that it “can’t be rape if she’s your girlfriend”, or: “It’s not rape if she’s drunk, because she’s asking for it.”

After everything I’ve heard over the past three years, and the tens of thousands of testimonies I’ve read from people experiencing sexism, harassment and abuse, if I could change one single thing to make a difference, this is it. We owe our children good, compulsory sex and relationships education. We owe it to children already experiencing abuse and we owe it to those who might later become adult victims because the key messages weren’t ingrained from the very beginning.

Laura Bates: Since I founded the Everyday Sexism Project, I have been writing about the abuses that women face: from catcalling to violence. With almost comforting regularity, the same criticisms appear below-the-line. Here is my reply