Health and Sex Education in the UK is Failing Young Women

By Anna Flaherty

I believe that the health services provided in the UK are exceptional. The NHS gives us access to free healthcare and is the 18th best healthcare system in the world (as ranked by the World Population Review, 2021*). However, how we are educated in the UK on female health is so poor that many of us are left ill-equipped to care for and understand our bodies.

Over recent years, PSHE (personal, social, health, and economic education), the UK’s compulsory social education module, has faced many reforms that are all aimed at enhancing the health and social education that teenagers receive. However, there are serious failings in the national curriculum.

Typically taught for one hour a week during secondary school, PSHE is expected to answer any and all questions regarding health and social awareness, as well as equip us with the knowledge to understand our bodies and advocate for ourselves (and yes, this is the class that was also supposed to teach you how taxes and mortgages work).

However, this class is rarely a success story. Broadly remembered as “that class where I had to put a condom on a banana”, PSHE is not treated as a serious subject – perhaps in part due to its lack of exams and its casual set-up. It is usually taught by form tutors, who are out of their comfort zone and subject area.

As for the students that are focused on making the most of these classes, the classroom environment is not necessarily the place they want to ask all their burning, intimate questions. We all remember how embarrassing it is to make a mistake in school, and asking a stupid question regarding sexual health is probably right at the top of the embarrassment scale.

There are equally serious flaws where the social and health areas overlap. When it comes to education about consent and sexual assault, we are given cards with helpline numbers, but no discussion about what constitutes assault, or what the consequences may be.

PSHE is supposed to prepare us for real-world events that we will all face, if not personally then vicariously through our friends. Whilst these educational failings affect all young people, the damage caused by the omission of so much crucial information is brutal on young girls.

Even when classes were split up into groups of boys and girls, there was no mention of smear tests, how to correctly examine your breast tissue, or where to go for more information on our bodies and how they work. When I was told to be fearful of breast lumps, there was no mention of the distinction between a suspicious mass and the normal variety of textures naturally present within breast tissue. The list of omissions is endless, and yet so many of these things that can cause serious anxiety could be taught and resolved in just a few sentences within an educational environment.

In the girls' group, the entire discussion seemed to revolve around periods. Despite this, there was still no mention of the severity of the side-effects you can experience from hormonal contraception, no warning that period pain can be a sign of medical issues and are not always benign, and no discussion about local or national sexual consent laws. The closest thing we have to a definitive open resource on these topics is the NHS website. But, while an accurate and reliable source of information, the NHS website is brief and unengaging and has no specific pages aimed at teens.

In the last twenty years, there have been changes to the PSHE curriculum. The introduction of topics such as LGBTQIA+ relationships is an encouraging sign that we are moving forward. As part of UK school health programs, HPV vaccines were also introduced in 2008 for teenage girls, and in 2018 these also began to be offered to boys.

But even with these changes came serious oversights. Whilst it was great to be given an HPV vaccine, I had no education about what this meant for me. Part of my PSHE was learning about sexual health, but HPV was barely touched upon and not discussed in relation to the injections that I was fortunate enough to receive. Likewise, after the introduction of LGBTQIA+ relationship education, there was still no talk of sexual health between these couples. Keeping sex education focused on heterosexual couples puts many young people at risk and make them uncertain about their health and relationships. It also plays into homophobic stigmas that are already present in secondary schools.

Our healthcare system gives us so much, but without the necessary education to back it up we are left too reliant on our overworked GPs, and on the internet (not the best place for young people to learn about sex and society). It seems obvious that the first step in rectifying this is to introduce specialist subject teachers, the way we do for every other subject. As the subject with, arguably, the most universally important educational benefit, having lessons taught by non-subject specific teachers can only be viewed as an oversight. Having specialised educators would lead to a more respected PSHE course, and one where we can ensure young people are being taught what they need to know.

*World Population Review https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world