Abstract
Objective Sex education promotes sexual health service use when delivered collaboratively by health professionals and teachers. This pilot study explored the barriers to collaboration between school nurses, family planning nurses and teachers.
Design Qualitative, exploratory study.
Setting Community health services and secondary schools in the London Borough of Southwark.
Method Semi-structured interviews with key informants from education and health.
Results All respondents agreed that the teaching of sex education should be multidisciplinary and that barriers to collaboration exist particularly where sex and relationship education (SRE) is given low priority by schools. SRE is given low priority by schools where it is seen as taking curriculum time from examinable subjects and where pupils are perceived not to be at risk of sexual ill health.
Conclusion The variation between schools in quantity and quality of sex education provided is significant and unpredictable.
Keywords
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