Feature

Tracey’s tale

Sex education should start young and be relevant, says Tracey Pritchard. She knows, because she’s been there

My name is Tracey Pritchard. I am 20 years old. I have been involved in a young women’s drop-in called Y-WAIT for about four years now. I have been asked to write about my experience or views on sex education.

Sex education at school started in the second year for me and was totally irrelevant. It was about the reproduction of frogs - human reproduction couldn’t be more different! When we, as a class who felt we needed to know more, asked why we were being taught about frogs and animals, we were told that human reproduction wasn’t a factor in our lives yet, and we would receive sex education in the fourth and fifth years.

Unfortunately in my case human reproduction was a factor and I became pregnant when I was 13. So I never got the sex education in the fourth and fifth years because I had left school. I am sure that if I had received proper sex education in school then I might not have become pregnant.

Schools need to teach sex education to children as young as nine or ten. That is the age to start teaching children about animal reproduction so that it’s easier to lead into human reproduction at about 11 or 12. Sex education isn’t and shouldn’t just be about the mechanics of sex. It should include contraception and safer sex. It should give you all the information you need to make a choice. Young people have a right to know how puberty changes your bodies and what kind of responsibility they have to themselves and any present or future sexual partners.

Sex education should include homosexuality. There are a lot of confused young people who aren’t ‘going through a phase’ or who won’t ‘grow out of it’. Homosexuality is not abnormal and should not be treated as such by schools and parents.

Sex is a factor in everybody’s life - whether you are having sex or not you still need the information to make informed choices about your body. How can anyone decide whether to have sex or not if they don’t have all the information?