The Health and Education Ministries have launched new programmes to impart sex education to children through digital means, although questions remain on why initiatives regarding sex education in the past have not been sustainable in the long term.
E-books on sexuality education
The Education Ministry on Thursday (7) launched a series of e-books on sexuality education through its ‘e-thaksalawa’ digital platform.
Parliamentary Caucus for Children Chair MP Rohini Wijerathna Kavirathna told The Sunday Morning that the need to provide this additional knowledge to children came about due to two reasons: “Children may face abuse due to their own unawareness. Studies have shown that children may not even know they are being abused as they are unaware of what is happening. Although the Health and Physical Education subject is there in the school syllabus, there is a question on whether the lessons on sexuality education reach the children due to cultural barriers. To control such abusive incidents and to help children avoid them, we have launched these e-books, available in all three languages, so that children can get this additional knowledge.”
Kavirathna further said that the books were age-specific and accordingly, different versions were available to children from Grades 1 to 13.
“The Education Ministry and the National Institute of Education (NIE) decided what to provide the children through a committee, which included child specialists, psychologists, and educationists. Each book is suitable for children of that particular age group – for example, smaller children start by learning about concepts such as good touch, bad touch, and the value of their bodies. The books are divided into four categories and will be given as four additional reading materials.”
According to Kavirathna, the next phase of the programme will include training for teachers, while the Women and Health Ministries will carry out awareness-building programmes for adults, including new parents, on how they should approach sexuality education for their toddlers.
‘Let’s Learn Life’ social media campaign
Meanwhile, the Health Ministry launched the ‘Let’s Learn Life’ social media awareness campaign on sex education on Thursday (7) as well. Speaking at the launch event, Health Ministry Secretary Dr. Palitha Mahipala noted that the Family Health Bureau’s statistics showed that 9,344 teenage pregnancies had occurred in 2023.
“Citizens use a range of different methods to access knowledge about sex, which leads them into trouble due to a lack of accuracy in those sources. We need to have open conversations about sex education – this is the suitable time for this. We need to speak about maternal deaths that occur as a result of teenage pregnancies. We have observed that sex and reproductive knowledge is low in both teenagers who undergo pregnancies and their parents. To combat this, sexuality education is needed, specialist doctors have noted.”
The Health Promotion Bureau (HPB) had been mandated by the Parliamentary Caucus for Children in 2023 to deliver age-appropriate sexuality education to the public. Following stakeholder consultations and workshops with 60 experts, it had been decided to deliver messages in six thematic areas:
- Sexuality awareness
- Promotion of positive parenting goals
- Relationship well-being
- Sexuality-related myth busting
- Secure use of digital devices, internet, and social media
- Awareness on law and legal systems
Five target groups had also been identified: child, adolescent, youth, adult and elderly, and ‘everybody involved’. Sixty key messages had been prioritised for content development. The resources can be accessed through the social media platforms (and handles) as shown in Figure 1.
Also speaking at the launch event, Health Minister Dr. Ramesh Pathirana recounted a personal experience when he had worked as a doctor in a rural hospital in the south.
“In the one-and-a-half years I worked there, at least 15 to 20 children were abused and came to the hospital for treatment during night shifts. The mother, the grandmother, or the female relative who came with the child would request two things. One was to provide treatment that would prevent the child from getting pregnant and the other was to not tell anyone about the incident as they did not want to go to the legal system about it. After 20 years, when I went to the same hospital recently, I asked the doctors there about the situation now.”
He said the doctors had said that the numbers of such incidents had reduced somewhat while noting that the most valuable improvement was that the female guardian who accompanied the child would inquire how they could use the law at least 50% of the time. “We have come forward as a society there,” he said.
Contentious issue
Sex education has been a contentious issue in the country, with especially the clergy opposing progress on imparting vital knowledge to children despite experts and child rights activists noting the benefits of doing so. The most prominent recent example was the opposition to the ‘Hathe Ape Potha’ – a supplementary textbook on reproductive education. The book was eventually recalled due to protests by religious leaders.
Hans Billimoria from The Grassrooted Trust, speaking to The Sunday Morning, questioned why the Health and Physical Education subject was not being properly taught in schools.
“Why has that not been augmented with universal application across the board? The subject covers sex and reproduction and the prevention of Sexually-Transmitted Diseases (STDs), including HIV. This is the current syllabus. It is quite extensive but the teachers skip that. The question is, why are the existing teachers not given the requisite skill set to impart the existing curriculum?”
He noted that while the information in new initiatives on sex education may be “fantastic,” the sustainability of such programmes remained in question.
“The school ecosystem is ideal to have this conversation around relationship education. It is not just about penises and vaginas, it is also about how we treat each other. Respect, empathy, and understanding – these are the essential issues. Having social emotional learning from pre-school is fantastic and brilliant, but what is the plan to ensure that schools cannot pick and choose whether to teach it?”