Vernon Matters file photo

By Liam Verster

Sex Ed Review

Review finds sex health education in Vernon School District is not meeting the standard

Jan 20, 2022 | 5:30 AM

A review of sexual health education at School District 22 has found some big gaps that need to be addressed.

During the January 19 school board meeting, Dawn Ansdell, a nurse practitioner, parent and sexual health educator, told the board that the B.C. curriculum includes age-appropriate sexual health education that needs to be taught to kids of all ages.

“Just like how we don’t just start teaching kids calculus, we teach them the building blocks of math; so is such with sexual health education,” said Ansdell.

She said sexual health education has been identified as a human right by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and with today’s technology, kids are being exposed to sexual health through other means than the education system.

In order to address this, Ansdell reviewed B.C.’s primary curriculum on sexual health, which includes teaching the proper names of genitals, appropriate and inappropriate ways of being touched, strategies and skills to use in potentially unsafe situations, caring behaviours and the affects of bullying. She said the biggest issue she found was teachers not using the appropriate terminology when teaching this subject.

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“This is for protection for children, this arms them for abuse. If they know their anatomy, they know to report, they know how to report it and they know where,” said Ansdell.

She noted that intermediate education should teach students about puberty every year, but most students in SD 22 only get one year of education on that topic.

“This has a significant impact on self image, self esteem, inclusivity,” Ansdell remarked.

“As we all remember, puberty is a massive time of big changes, and teachers aren’t necessarily comfortable, especially if you’re a different gender and not familiar teaching different things about what changes occur.”

She also told the board that she has learned anecdotally that some teachers in SD 22 high schools are teaching abstinence only, which she said does more harm than no education at all, as some kids will be sexually active and will be doing so without the proper education or the knowledge of how to stay safe.

Ansdell told the board that the goal of sexual health education is to achieve positive outcomes like improved self-esteem, rewarding relationships and informed reproductive choices, while avoiding negative outcomes like sexually transmitted infections, sexual abuse and unintended pregnancy.

She said studies have shown that students who have access to a full range of sexual health education are more likely to see those positive outcomes and avoid the negative ones, and proposed that a sexual health education policy be written to update the curriculum and ensure it is taught in schools.

Ansdell also proposed that libraries be equipped with body awareness and sexual health resources that are age-appropriate and within curriculum standards, and that funding be put in place to implement a sexual health educator/consultant position in the school district.

“Teachers are not comfortable with this information, the vernacular has changed. It’s something that they really miss when they speak with them,” said Ansdell.

“I would say if there isn’t an appetite to reimplement some funding for an actual educator that would standardize and comprehensively teach it across the district, then standardize some lesson plans so that this information is covered as it is laid out in the curriculum.”

She also suggested peer education programming either through pride clubs or other delivery models, but stated that only in a worse case scenario should this be used on it’s own.

Ansdell also told the trustees that teaching students about different gender identities and sexual orientations is important as these students will come across people who have different preferences than their own, and it’s important that they know of that so they can be inclusive and respectful.

The report was accepted by the school board for information.