Survey finds that Senior Secondary School Students would Benefit from more Sex Education in School

The Age, 4 August 2009

A national survey of secondary school students’ sexual health practices, thoughts and opinions has found that one third of all respondents revealed that they have experienced unwanted sex.

The fourth National Survey of Secondary Students and Sexual Health, administered by the Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University, surveyed 2926 Year 10 and Year 12 students.

The results showed that the two most dominate reasons for unwanted sex were being pressured by their partner and ‘just being drunk’. Professor Anthony Smith, one of the project’s researchers, told The Age that ‘strikingly, girls in Year 12 were having more sexual partners and drinking 30 per cent more than they did when a similar survey was done in 2002’.

Professor Smith argued that the survey findings called attention to the fact that secondary school students needed sex education in schools to ‘better explain links between underage drinking and sexual behaviour that might be accompanied with regret later’.

However, secondary school students seem to have a ‘healthy awareness’ of safe-sex practices, with the survey results showing high usage of condoms and contraceptives in sexually active teenagers.

The survey also found that teenagers today are not embarrassed to ask for questions about sex, with 88 per cent of respondents saying that they had actively asked for information from adults and peers.

Comparing the current survey results with those of previous years, Professor Smith stated that ‘we are not seeing broad general trends but changes that are gender and year-level specific. For the most part, young people are having sex because they want to and they are enjoying it. They are also using condoms and contraception to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted disease and pregnancy’.

Click here to access a copy of the fourth National Survey of Secondary Students and Sexual Health results. (PDF 2MB)

 

 

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