Sex Education for 5 year-olds?!!

Not really! The government’s education proposals would start 5 year olds off by looking at relationships, through the use of techniques such as family trees. They would also be taught to recognise that animals produce offspring and be able to name parts of their bodies. The older children would be taught to prepare for puberty and they would be able to talk about their feelings and friendships.

It would only be at secondary level that students would learn about developing mutually respectful personal relationships, the importance of stable relationships to family life and how risky sexual behaviour contributes to the possibility of contracting sexually-transmitted infections and possible unplanned pregnancies.

As a humanist, I believe it is essential that young people are given the knowledge to avoid unplanned pregnancies, particularly at a time when the UK has the highest rate of unplanned pregnancies among young women in Europe.

Just preaching abstinence does not work – as Sarah Palin’s daughter can testify.

There are also proposals to cover topics to do with money; in particular, how to manage personal finances. It is amazing that young people leaving school can undertake mathematical feats involving algebraic calculations, differentiated calculus and trigonometry – most of which they never get to use in adult life - while most are incapable of setting – and keeping to – personal financial budgets.

Most mathematics taught in schools is of little real use in later life. Learning about real finances would serve them much better and it might just help them to avoid the current credit-fuelled crisis which is gripping Britain and the rest of the world at the present time.

Scrap the useless maths and religion taught in schools and let’s see learning activities which can be of real use to the young people who are so badly let down by the UK education system today.