Two leading sexual health charities are calling for children as young as four to be given compulsory sex education.
Brook and the Family Planning Association (FPA) argue that teaching children about sex from a young age would help reduce abortion rates and sexually transmitted infections when they reach adolescence.
The charities said children should be taught the names of body parts and about sex and relationships.
The Brook chief executive, Simon Blake, is calling for all UK governments to ensure that all children age four upwards receive sex and relationships education in schools.
Blake said: "If we get high quality sex and relationships education in every primary and secondary school across the UK, all the evidence shows teenage pregnancy rates will continue to fall and will improve young people's sexual health.
"Whilst sex and relationships education continues to be patchy, another generation of children and young people do not get the education they need to form healthy relationships and protect their sexual health."
Brook wants every primary and secondary school to be legally required to provide sex and relationships education and secondary schools to ensure that young people have access to free confidential contraceptive and sexual health services.
He told the BBC: "Many young people are having sex because they want to find out what it is, because they were drunk or because their mates were.
"That's just not good enough for young people. We've got to have high expectations for them so they've got high expectations for themselves."
He added: "All the evidence shows that if you start sex and relationships education early - before children start puberty, before they feel sexual attraction - they start having sex later.
"They are much more likely to use contraception and practise safe sex."
The Department for Children, Schools and Families issued new draft guidance on wellbeing for schools yesterday.
The Sex Education Forum (SEF), the national authority on sex and relationships education, called for Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE), which includes sex and relationships education, to be made statutory.
Anna Martinez, head of the SEF, said: "Considering the value placed on PSHE in the guidance, SEF is once again urging government to consider making it a statutory subject, to give PSHE the high status it deserves as an essential part of all children's education."
Julie Bentley, chief executive of the FPA, said: "This is not about teaching four-year-olds how to have sex but teaching them about respecting themselves and others and giving them the confidence to ask questions when they get older and do want to find out more.
"It's like maths - at primary school children learn the basics so that they can understand more and more complex concepts at a later stage."
She added: "Parents are concerned that if they are told about sex they will go straight out and have it but the research shows the complete opposite. They have sex later and when they do they have safer sex."
At present, all children have to learn about the biology of reproduction but parents can opt to remove children from PSHE lessons, where they learn about the emotional and relationships side of sex.
I agree with this.. Kids should be taught about sex as early as they can understand it. Especially girls. And parents should talk to thier kids about sex as openly and as often as possible so that the kids have no questions and understand it completely. The more educated they are the better decisions they can make.
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Book of Cash Chapter 2: Verse 11- Do not PM or IM me until you have exhausted every other way.
First off, an opinion cannot be wrong....its an OPINION
Ok, good. In my opinion, you're an idiot. Good thing I can't be wrong!
Timothy 2:12
You really think a four year old can understand sex? I think that is a few years too early for it to make any impact on them. I would think something more like seven or eight would be more appropriate. My cousin is six and I don't think he could understand this on a high enough level yet for them teaching him to be of use.
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"It's always a bad play when the other team scores." - John Madden
Ok well this is where the wording in an article is written on purpose to incite people who don't know any better to get the opinion you have.
It says that children should be taught sex education starting at 4. That is like me saying children should be taught how to read starting at age 4.
And your response would be the equivalent of asking me if 4 year olds should really be reading war and peace.
I highly doubt they are saying they want 4 year olds to know everything about sex and relationships.. But I'll tell you both of my daughters called a penis a penis and a vagina a vagina before they were 4 years old.
__________________
Book of Cash Chapter 2: Verse 11- Do not PM or IM me until you have exhausted every other way.
First off, an opinion cannot be wrong....its an OPINION
Ok, good. In my opinion, you're an idiot. Good thing I can't be wrong!
Timothy 2:12
I listen to the news quite a lot, and this has been making a HUGE storm over the last few days. To clarify something here, they will be teaching Sex and RELATIONSHIPS. At four they aren't going to be teaching where babys come from, they will be teaching kids about the diffrent kinds of relationships there are, like Mummy and Daddy's, Big Brother and his Girlfriends, and Johnny and his best friend Bob. That came straight from the horses mouth.
Saying that, kids in this country really need to be taught about this stuff early. The UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe, and I think I heard somewhere that it has a higher pregnancy rate than a lot of the developing world. In fact, there is a 15 year old girl at my school who is pregnant. And this is a grammer school, so we are supposed to be the cream of the crop. This week in a tabloid I read a story about an 11 year old girl who fessed up to having sex. Now that is disgusting.
Will teaching this to younger kids really be a good idea though? Maybe it will just make the kids more and more curious when their horomones kick in. I don't know, but the goverment has to try something, or else the teenage pregnancy rate will just keep spiralling out of control.
It's being run by me.. I educate my daughters about sex because I was raised the same way. It was something that was discussed openly. It's unfortunate how many kids have absolutely no clue about sex and end up learning all about it from 'friends'.
__________________
Book of Cash Chapter 2: Verse 11- Do not PM or IM me until you have exhausted every other way.
First off, an opinion cannot be wrong....its an OPINION
Ok, good. In my opinion, you're an idiot. Good thing I can't be wrong!
Timothy 2:12
Ok, but what about someone like me then? My parents have never really talked to me about sex, would it be right for the schools to teach me stuff like this at age four? Could it mess with me because my parents havn't told me about the rights and wrongs? I don't know why they havn't, maybe its because they don't feel too comfortable, or maybe its the same way they were raised.
Thats the whole point.. The schools are taking over because the parents aren't doing their jobs. The schools need to take over. Schools are there to educate. Without schools there would be a lot of uneducated kids because most parents wouldn't take the time to teach their kids everything taught in school. This is just adding one more important LIFE curriculum, thats parents are FAILING to teach their kids.
__________________
Book of Cash Chapter 2: Verse 11- Do not PM or IM me until you have exhausted every other way.
First off, an opinion cannot be wrong....its an OPINION
Ok, good. In my opinion, you're an idiot. Good thing I can't be wrong!
Timothy 2:12
