Tory MP Claire Perry, the Prime Minister’s special adviser on children and a governor of St John’s Academy, Marlborough, has joined a campaign demanding that sex education in secondary schools should be updated to reflect the digital age of the internet.
“The rise of sexting, online bullying, porn and young people documenting their entire lives on the web needs to be a core tenet of how we teach sex and relationships,” she has told the Wonder Women campaign for better sex education backed by the Daily Telegraph.
It is supporting the NSPCC, which has called on the government to update its “woefully inadequate” sex education guidance, which is 13 years old and contains no reference to the internet.
The children’s charity wants Prime Minister David Cameron urgently to convene a group of experts, young people and teachers to rewrite the guidance, which is the only official teaching material available, to bring it into the 21st century.
Since the document was published in 2000, the rise of online pornography and social media means children are being exposed to sex more often and earlier than before, experts report.
Mrs Perry, mother of three, agrees that the guidance should be redrawn by sex education experts.
“Rather than putting one more set of responsibilities on the shoulders of hard-working teachers, it should be possible to encourage schools to develop relationships with the many excellent charities and organisations that use trained experts to deliver the right messages to young people in appropriate and high-impact ways,” she declares.
Several reports have suggested that the government should act to improve sex education. The current curriculum focuses on the mechanics of sex and pregnancy.
However, information about contraception and safe sex is discretionary and discussion about relationships is often neglected.
The Department for Education concluded in its review of personal, social, heath and economic education (PSHE) in March that it would refresh drugs and alcohol teaching, but it failed to commit to updating sex and relationships.
The Department for Education announced: “Our recent PSHE review found that the existing guidance offers a sound framework for sex and relationship education in school.”
Research by the NSPCC since then has shown that in the absence of meaningful sex education in schools, the internet is warping young people’s views about relationships.
This is why 49-year-old Mrs Perry believes it is time to teach children the difference between porn and healthy relationships at a time when many girls, according to the NSPCC, feel they have to “look and perform like porn stars” in order to be liked by boys.
Almost a third of pupils believe pornography dictates how they should behave in a relationship, a NSPCC survey of 601 secondary school pupils aged 11 to 18 showed.
Seventy-two per cent said pornography should be talked about in sex education, suggesting that lessons are too focused on the mechanics of reproduction and lack meaningful discussion about the issues young people face online.
Other findings showed that schoolchildren are three times more likely to go online for advice or information on sex and relationships than they are to consult their parents or helplines.
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