Do schools need sexual education?

Sexuality education could help to reduce teenage pregnancies. FILE PHOTO.

What you need to know:

  • The troubles of growing up start early enough but what is more challenging is the behavioural and bodily changes that usually manifest in teenagers.

Sexuality remains a debatable subject and it will remain as such so as long as man survives through another day.

But for teenagers, it is more than a debate but rather a sting on life that comes with new desires and challenges.

In life ambitions are set early enough but many fail during the teenage years when the journey of critical changes begins.

Here (teenage years) school will be cut short because of pregnancy and diseases and boys will go on a rampage smoking and chewing like goats.

And for this, the blame game will set in with parents blaming schools for failing their role of educating and safe keeping children.

But schools will not take in the blame and will most probably blame parents for their children’s poor upbringing.

This will go on until when the world realises that a future has been shattered; shattered because no one ever wanted to take on the challenge.

Victims, some quite dishonest, have attested ignorance of sexuality education. They claim to have been caught unaware and taken advantage of. Indeed some have been taken advantage of and shattered for the rest of their lives.

Winnie Nansamba*, 28, is an opharn, who was initiated into motherhood at just 15 years.
“I had no one to talk to on the consequences of my body changes as I grew up,” she says, looking away shyly as if to hide the guilty.

Picking up the ruins
But the hard days notwithstanding, Nansamba has picked up herself and become a hard rock that boldly tells young girls of the consequences of teenage sex.

“I took life lightly. I should have had someone to tell me how life is so cruel. I use my experience to warn (young girls) not to fall in the trap I fell into,” Nansamba now 28 years and a peer educator in Hoima District, says.

It all started in Senior Two when Nansamba started to curve out into a woman.
“I had a perfect body. I felt I had it all and this is when the confusion started,” she say, adding that it was around this time that men – in her age bracket and some old enough to be her father - started to make suggestions.
“I got so many advances that threw me into confusion,” she says but “I did not know what to do.”

And in that confusion with no one to show her out, Nansamba started on a journey that not only forced her into being a teenage mother but prostitution. However, by a stroke of luck, Nansamba abandoned prostitution and has since dedicated her time to peer education and a restaurant job in Hoima.
“Most of the girls I was with [in prostitution] have died of HIV/AIDS. I am just lucky to be alive,” she says.

Nansamba’s story is a mirror image that forms in the life of most teenagers who have had to deal with new sexual challenges as they mature through life.
This story remains a contentious one and continues to generate debate on the need to integrate age-appropriate sexuality education in the school curriculum.
According to Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos), one in every four teenage girls between 15 and 19 years gets pregnant.

The magnitude
In real terms, Ubos data shows 1.2 million women get pregnant annually but 25 per cent of these are teenage pregnancies.
Of these, more than 300,000 teenagers explain it away as a mistake that in most cases ends into an abortion.
Peer educators such as Nansamba think young girls should on a regular basis be reminded of sexuality.

This, although has faced serious resistance, Nansamba believes can be integrated into the school curriculum.

“Teenagers will always find out issues to do with sex but with wrong information,” she says.
A 2015 reproductive health report by Ministry of Health showed that although most young people in Uganda have heard about aspects of sexuality and reproductive health, few have detailed knowledge.

Yet, according to the Uganda Demographic Health survey 2011, about 14 per cent of young women and 16 per cent of young men had their first sexual encounter before turning 15 years.
The same report showed that 57 per cent of young women had their first encounter before the age of 18.

According to the report, those who have heard of the various methods of contraception, few had actually seen them while many could not cite a facility within their community where such methods could be found.

Resisting sexuality education
Faith Kasungwa, 26, another peer educator in Kigurubya Sub-county in Hoima District says those who purport that sexuality education will lead young girls into prostitution, are bitterly resisting them but they provide no alternative.

The peer education, she says has helped to bring down teenage pregnancies in Hoima District with a higher rate of adherence to family planning methods observed among the youth.
According to data from Hoima District health office, abortion rates in Hoima District among the youth fell from 64.9 per cent in 2014 to 58.6 per cent in 2015.

Use of family planning methods increased from 50 per cent to 52 per cent in the same period.
Youth pregnancies, however, increased from 62 per cent to 61 per cent in 2015, probably showing the need for more sensitisation.

Teenage pregnancy

According to the 2008 Ministry of Health report, 292,000 abortions are carried out annually in Uganda accounting for 26 per cent of maternal deaths.
This translates into 800 abortions per day and experts say more than a half of these are procured using crude methods.

Uganda has a considerable number of policies designed to protect young females from getting pregnant during, including the National Health Policy, the National Adolescents Health policy, the sexual reproductive health minimum package, the minimum age of sexual consent policy, and the defilement law among others.

Many sections of these policies have not been implemented, leaving loopholes that are exploited, against the teenage girl.

Sexuality in school
Teaching sexuality. A new school curriculum has been developed for students in lower secondary from senior one to senior four to be taught aspects of sexuality education but it is facing resistence from a number of stakeholders.

Aspects to be taught. Among the things that are going to be taught are body changes during adolescence, emotional changes such as mood swings and paying attention to detail, especially for girls, how to control emotional feelings, personal hygiene, sexual maturation and relationships among others.

Continuation. The topic will be part of the life education learning area under the new curriculum. According to National Curriculum Development Centre. It will be a continuation of the upper primary reproductive health education.