Sex Education From Your Peers?

I vaguely remember actually proceeding through a sex education class in middle school. There were talks of menstrual cycles, hand-drawn figures of males and females, an uptight teacher wishing she did not have to be the one to teach us these things and lots of snickering girls, including myself. Come on…I was about twelve years old and hearing the word “penis” at that age was akin to having a teacher accidentally fart in front of a classroom. Hilarious. But imagine if that same course was taught not by the uptight teacher, but by one of your own peers at that age? In an attempt to curb the high teenage pregnancy rates in the United Kingdom, trials have been conducted to test how effective a peer-led sex education course can be compared to a teacher-led one.

The UK government has sponsored an effort to cut down the teenage pregnancy rate by 50% by the year 2010. In a study entitled RIPPLE (Randomized Intervention of Pupil-led Sex Education), Judith Stephenson and other researchers from the University College London proved to determine if sexual education/information offered by fellow peers would prove more effective in reducing the number of teenage pregnancies and abortions and in generally improving teenagers’ sexual health.

Over twenty-five schools participated with approximately 9,000 students between the ages of 13 and 14. Each school was randomly decided to either peer-led or teacher led sex education classes. The results were probably not exactly what were expected. For 16 year-old girls, of those who participated in the pupil-led courses, there were fewer unplanned pregnancies; however, it must be noted, that there was only a small difference in this category when comparing pupil-led to teacher-led courses. The long-term data was gathered using the medical records for both abortion and pregnancies of the girls who participated. By the time the girls reached the age of 20, in terms of the number of those girls who had abortions, there was no difference between the two different groups. In addition, for both males and females participating in both groups, there was no difference in terms of the number of those students who eventually got diagnosed with an STD (sexually transmitted disease).

One issue that should be noted, however, is that students were much more enthusiastic about the peer-led sexual education courses. The authors of the study state that the data retrieved from the study should “temper high-expectations about the long-term impact of peer-led approaches.” However, they also note that “taken as a whole, the results support consideration of [peer-led sessions] as part of a much broader strategy to reduce teenage pregnancy.” Davis Ross from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine voices his opinion on the study and states that it is imperative to “continue to develop and rigorously evaluate new approaches to reduce the adoption of sexual risk behaviors by young people” in the United Kingdom as well as other countries that have increased HIV rates, increased teenage pregnancy rates and higher than normal infant mortality rates.