Final Report of Six Years of Research into Abstinence

A six-year study the final report of which is available to download as a pdf from http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/impactabstinence.pdf examined the behaviour of more than 2,000 American teenagers and found that sexual abstinence education does not work and says that the $1.5 billion spent by the US government to promote abstinence over the past ten years has been a waste of money. The study was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, a nonpartisan firm, which conducts policy research and surveys in healthcare, education, welfare, employment, nutrition, and early childhood.

The study (http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/welfare/abstinence.asp ) followed the sexual behaviour of teenagers from a cross-section of communities in Florida, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Virginia. Their average age was 16. Half of the sample who had received abstinence only education displayed the same sexual behaviour as those who had received sex education in which contraception was discussed. Teenagers from both sample groups had the same average age for their first sexual experience: 14.9 years, and one quarter in both groups had had sex with three or more partners. (Guardian, 16 April 2007, p3; Times, 16 April 2007, p30)

Davina McCall and Let's Talk Sex

The popular TV presenter and celebrity Davina McCall has aligned herself to the campign for compulsory sex and relationships education and the programme Let's Talk Sex was shown again on Channel 4 on 23rd March.

This wonderful programme showed the open and honest approach of teachers and parents in the Netherlands, where teenage pregnancy is not the huge problem it is in the UK, and young people seem much less hung up about sex and relationships.

Davina McCall selected three words which epitomise what sex education should be: EARLY, CONSISTENT and COMPULSORY. At the moment in the UK it is none of these things.