Children of five 'should be given sex lessons'
Pastor Dale Morgan
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Children of five 'should be given sex lessons'*
By Auslan Cramb
Last Updated: 12:44am GMT 31/12/2007
Sex education lessons should be given to children as young as five in an
attempt to combat rising levels of teen pregnancy and sexually
transmitted infections, a senior UK public health doctor has said.
Dr Charles Saunders warned that schools were leaving the "safe sex
message" so late that many youngsters were being exposed to unnecessary
risks.
He said that by the time they were 12, many children were "already
experimenting".
Dr Saunders, the chairman of the British Medical Association's
consultants' committee in Scotland, also suggested that secondary
schools should hand out contraception to older children.
At present, most children in Scottish schools do not learn about sex
until they are aged 10 or 11. He added: "It probably needs to be started
off when children start school. You need to start laying the groundwork
to help them and empower them to make decisions and turn things down.
"At five it needs to be in language that they understand and taught in
the same way as any other subject, a fairly superficial introduction."
Scotland's sexual health record is one of the poorest in the Western
world, with cases of chlamydia rising six per cent in April to June this
year.
Teenage pregnancies are also increasing, with more than 9,000 recorded
in 2005.
The Scottish Executive said it was up to individual schools to decide
when to begin sex education, but the Catholic Church described the
proposal as "pointless".
A spokesman said: "It's way over their heads at five years old and would
be as pointless as giving them a talk on alcohol. At the age of 15 it's
a different matter."