By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent Telegraph
School pupils are being taken on tours of sexual health clinics in an attempt to highlight the perils of unprotected sex.
A school trip used to mean a day out at a local museum or nature reserve. But now, classes are making visits to NHS sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics. Clinic staff say the tours are an attempt to “demystify” the consequences of unprotected sex, preparing many children for visits in later life. After each visit, students are sharing their findings with other pupils in school assemblies.
Critics fear that the tours are “normalising promiscuity,” creating a self-fulfilling prophecy which will further fuel the rise in sexually transmitted diseases. The number of STDs diagnosed in children under 16 has risen by 58 per cent in five years, with chlamydia now the most common infection. The visits include examinations of diseases such as gonorrhoea under the microscope, demonstrations about how to use a condom and question and answer sessions about the risks of different sexual activities. The tours of the Jefferiss Wing Centre for Sexual Health, at St Mary’s Hospital, in London, usually involve teenagers aged between 14 and 16, and only take place when regular clinics are not running.
Margaret Morrissey, founder of pressure group Parents Outloud said she was “deeply concerned” about the promotion of such initiatives in schools said: “I think they have totally lost the plot. Of course children and teenagers need information about sex, but it needs to be in the context of a loving relationship. “Taking a group of 14 year-olds to an STD clinic not only suggests that casual sex is normal, but will make many teenagers feel under pressure to rush into sexual relationships for which they are not ready. “I really worry that yet again we are treating children as mini-adults, and storing up terrible consequences for society.”
Jim McManus, from the Catholic Bishops Conference, also expressed concerns about the way such schemes focused on the practicalities of sex, without any moral context. He said: “If you take a group of teenage kids around a genito-urinary clinic, all that does is familiarise them with the idea that there is nothing to all this, that STDs are bound to happen.” “That is an incredibly distorted message, when what we actually need to do is to teach teenagers that sex is part of a moral and ethical framework, and to give them the confidence to make the right choices,” added Mr McManus. Full story www.telegraph.co.uk