Examination of Witnesses (Questions 940-959)
THURSDAY 16 JANUARY 2003
MS NATALIE
STUART, MS
ANNA EAGLE,
MR JAY
BAILEY, MS
GEMMA MINTY,
MS RACHAEL
WARD AND
MR SCOTT
WILLIAMS
940. Do you feel that it has been very helpful
to you?
(Ms Eagle) Yes. I did benefit from it a lot.
941. Do you think that there are things that
could have been done differently or better that might have benefited
you even more?
(Ms Eagle) No. You have your own confidence and everything
and, if you need anyone to talk to, there are people there. People
come in from the hospitals and talk about pregnancy and it is
OK.
942. Ms Stuart, can I ask you more generally
about whether you feel that the school in your area and the health
service and GPs might have done things differently or better for
somebody in your situation.
(Ms Stuart) Do you mean when I was pregnant, what
did they do different for young mums to be?
943. Yes and what could have been done differently
or better perhaps.
(Ms Stuart) I know from my friends who became pregnant
at school that they went to talk to them and told them that they
had to leave the school. So, the schools do not give any support
at all. I am not too sure, really.
944. You picked up some of the questions that
we were asking the first group and one of the key ones was about
sex education. You are young mums and you obviously have an opportunity
to put to us your thoughts on the issue of sex education. Do you
think that you received good education or any sex education? If
not, what should have happened that did not happen in your circumstances?
(Ms Stuart) I did a child care course at college and,
when I was on the young-mums-to-be course, we had an electronic
baby. You knew what to do with the baby and the baby went off
and you did everything with this doll that you would do with a
baby. I actually received the doll when I was pregnant and I reckon
that, if I had received it before, it would have made me see things
differently. When I was getting in the shower, I had to do it
quick before the baby started crying to be fed and I had to feed
it for 45 minutes. I had to go to town and I had to do it in the
time that the baby was not going to cry. That works a lot more
than some video that people were laughing and giggling at. You
do not really get to learn much sex education at school because
people are immature and you are too frightened to ask questions.
945. So, your message to the Committee is that
that is a very important area that we have to look at as the previous
witnesses said?
(Ms Stuart) Yes.
946. Can I come on to our witnesses from Wigan.
I do not know who wants to answer this question but can you tell
us a little about the programmes that you have been involved in
and how they work.
(Ms Ward) I will take about my peer education project.
It is called Sex Talkers and we are a young peer education group.
We go through a 12 week training course. At the moment, we have
seven young people: five young people who have already been through
the training course who are peer education workers, which is like
myself, and then we have two young workers who we are training
up and we do the course with them. It is six weeks' confidence
building, which is like going through workshops, contraception,
HIV and AIDS, pregnancy and choices, sex and alcohol, sex and
condom use, sexual relationships and then we do the six weeks'
workshops. We go out and do workshops to other young people and
we train them up to go through the workshops in order that they
are not being chucked in at the deep end and they know what they
have to go out and do. What we are doing seems to be successful.
947. The message you are giving and that others
have given us is about the peer issue. It is very important that
people are receptive to talking to people from their own age group.
That is a very important message. What other benefits have arisen
from the work you have done? Mr Williams, we picked up in the
first session the position of young men. How do you feel that
this is related to the concerns of young men?
(Mr Williams) In relation to sex education relevant
to schools, it is not up to scratch really form the male point
of view. Males can be sat in mixed group classes. I have discovered
from a questionnaire that young men would rather chat to a male
teacher on their own or, as has been discussed, a peer from Sex
Talkers, but it would have to be a male because you are able to
talk to a male more easily and, if they know what they are talking
about—like the previous group said, if it is a geography
teacher, you do not really want that—and they are well educated
in what they are talking about, you listen to them more and listen
to what they are saying. Whereas, if you do not really understand
what they are talking about and they are not really qualified,
you are not really going to listen. The males found that the videos
were women orientated—how the pregnancy was and how the
woman should do such things. There was a minor bit about how to
put a condom on appropriately—"There it is, it is gone,
there you go. Have you learned?" "What?" That was
it. Obviously the teacher who taught you geography was quite embarrassed
about what he was telling a group of young students and obviously
the males are a very immature breed when we are young—
948. And when we are old!
(Mr Williams) We do giggle and laugh at stupid little
things.
Andy Burnham
949. I would like to ask all of you a little
more about how good schools are in all this. I went to a local
Catholic school and, to be honest, it was biology and a little
bit in the old fourth year and there was not a great deal more
than that. How good was your sex education in schools? When did
it start, for instance? For us it was 14.
(Ms Ward) When I was in primary school, it was more
like puberty sex education where you got shown how to use a Tampax.
So it started there and then we had nothing and it started again
at 14-15.
950. In your view, is that way, way too late?
(Ms Ward) Yes, it was because we already knew it all
anyway. It was the in thing to know and, if you did not know it,
like the other group was saying . . .
951. From your experience of being involved
in the project, how much kind of misinformation is out there?
How many young people have the wrong understanding? We heard about
some of the ideas people had about what the pill can do. Do you
think there is a lot of mis-information out there?
(Ms Ward) Yes.
952. Because it starts too late?
(Ms Minty) There are a lot of myths around in sex.
No one has actually sat down and told young people and straightened
all these myths out. A few weeks ago, one of my friends told me
that her little sister became involved in foreplay and, after
that, she came running into her room crying her eyes out thinking
that she was pregnant. To say that she was a 14-15 year old girl,
it is pretty ridiculous that she did not know the basic facts
around sex, foreplay and things like that. At primary school,
you get given all these strange objects: tampons and sanitary
towels. Then there is a huge gap before you get to high school
and then, when you are at high school, you are expected to know
and no one has the confidence to speak out and say, "Actually,
I do not know what sex is and I do not know this and I do not
know that."
953. What age would you give? I feel that it
should not start too early because, going back to the earlier
conversation, you should not be putting pressure on people to
feel that they should be sexually active when they do not feel
that they want to be. If you could pinpoint a kind of age, when
would you say it would be?
(Ms Minty) I think the basics of sex should be taught
in the last year of primary school, but that it should go into
more detail around about the age of 13.
954. Just as you are making the transition?
(Ms Minty) Yes.
955. Once you have found your feet in secondary
school, around that age?
(Mr Williams) It has been shown that young girls have
become pregnant. There was a girl from Essex who was pregnant
at the age of 12. Obviously they must have found out about sex
because they did it, but where was the education before that?
At the age of 12, I feel she is still a very young age and she
should not be pregnant at such a young age. If I were the father,
I would break the boy's legs, to be honest! The education should
start to inform them because, if she is having sex, obviously
she knows about it, so why should she not be taught the right
way to go about it?
Dr Naysmith
956. This raises an interesting question and
you probably heard me asking something similar to the previous
group. You have all this diversity that exists in classrooms in
British schools, different religions and so on and different stages
of awareness and different stages of readiness and Ms Stuart told
us that she received some advice when it was too late. Maybe you
need to tailor it to people much more because you do not want
to make individuals—and maybe Mr Bailey might want to say
a word or two about this—feel left out of the group. So,
it is not just a simple statement of saying, "At age five,
you get this; at age seven, you get that; at age nine, you get
that; and at age 14 you get something else." We need something
a little more individual. Would you agree?
(Mr Williams) Maybe the peer advice is more one-on-one.
Is that what you are talking about?
957. That would be very expensive.
(Mr Williams) We have a service in Wigan called Connexions,
the Connexions Service, and they have personal advisers. It is
a one-on-one basis and it is very, very confidential. It is for
young people. We have been involved in organising Connexions in
Wigan as part of the Youth Council and we have interviewed certain
PAs, as we call them, personal advisers, to ensure that they are
the right sort of people that we want because you need young people
and friendly people. No offence but you do not want to be chatting
to an old person whose moral issues are very different to yours.
It is like chatting to councillors and MPs now, you feel a little
intimidated as such. I do not, but some people do feel intimidated.
We need that one-on-one and we think that our PAs should be able
to give us condoms and relevant and informative but friendly advice.
You do not like lectures, do you? You do not like sitting there.
It is like the Youth Service now. If you ask them for condoms,
they have to talk to you and they have to give you the information
and a lot of young people want the condoms to have the sex. They
do not want the jargon. They sit there and they do not listen
to you because you are older then them. They do not give two hoots.
I think the peer issue is a lot better because, if I were to tell
a young person that what they are doing can seriously damage their
health when they are older with all sorts of cancers and infections,
then I think it would scare them but with an older person, like
our youth workers, telling them, they do not give two hoots.
Julia Drown
958. Can I just be clear that you are saying
that it is waste of time to have a teacher talking to a whole
group of people, but it would be OK for a peer?
(Mr Williams) A peer or someone like a nurse or someone
who is person friendly because not all teachers care about young
people. They are just there to do their job and you just think,
well, you do not give two hoots, so why should I?
Dr Naysmith
959. Ms Stuart was saying that she received
information after it was too late. If that had come earlier, would
that have been the right thing for everyone else in your class?
(Ms Stuart) Yes, it would have.
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