Scottish Christian.com

Home > News > Scottish Christian News Monitor

Sex lessons must start at age five

Sex education lessons should be given to schoolchildren as young as five as part of a bid to combat soaring levels of teenage pregnancy and sexual disease, Scotland's most senior public health doctor said last night.

Dr Charles Saunders, chairman of the British Medical Association's Scottish consultants' committee, warned that schools were leaving the safe-sex message so late that many teenagers were already exposing themselves to avoidable risk.

Saunders also called for secondary schools to hand out condoms and other forms of contraception to children from the age of 13.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church said five-year-olds were too young to understand sex.

He said: "When children reach puberty they are able to assimilate information about their own sexuality but they are just not ready at five. It's way over their heads and would be as pointless as giving a five-year-old a talk on alcohol. At the age of 15 it's a different matter."

Full story at Scotland on Sunday.