SCOTTISH schoolchildren need to be taught about consent, MSPs were told yesterday.
Holyrood’s Education and Skills Committee were warned that too many Scots are going through the Scottish education system without being told that grabbing, touching and sexual contact without a yes, was wrong.
Clare Clark, the communications director of Sexpression UK, said there was a real issue of young people starting university with a “missing gap” in their knowledge when it came to consent.
“People think it’s okay to go and grope someone on a night out because they haven’t been told that’s wrong,” Clark told the Committee. She said this could lead to “more serious consequences”.
Teaching school children about consent, would help make sure they had more respect for others and for themselves, she argued.
The discussion was part of the committee’s inquiry into Personal and Social Education (PSE), a subject taught in most secondary schools in Scotland, which covers sex education.
Erin Macauley, a Member of the Scottish Youth Parliament, and a trainee teacher, said teachers were often not properly equipped to talk to children about sex.
“It’s very clear that not just young people don’t feel equipped but they feel their teachers are not equipped.
“If their teacher is not confident on what to teach, or is not confident talking about relationship or sex education then that is having a bad effect on how they’re taking that on.”
She added that people were still embarrassed to talk about sex education and warned that school was often the last place people would get taught about consent.
Jack Douglas, LGBT+ Officer, NUS Scotland, said that the a recent survey by the student group found that one in five students face some form of sexual harassment in their first term at university.
He said this was a consequence of not teaching consent.
Jordan Daly, from the Time for Inclusive Education campaign, told the committee that Scottish children were simply not getting enough sex education, and nothing on LGBT issues.
He and his campaign spent time talking to teachers and pupils on what people needed and wanted to talk about at PSE.
Again, and again, he said, the same things kept coming up.
“Gender spectrum, sexual fluidity, identity, where they can get support, LGBT history. These are things that young people want to be taught.”
The committee next discuss PSE with Education minister John Swinney on March 8, 2016.
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