From December 2019 to June 2020, Cedos, in partnership with the Info Sapiens Research Agency, conducted a study on the awareness and attitudes of parents and teachers to comprehensive sexuality education, commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.

Brief findings of the study

Most parents and teachers have a positive attitude to informal comprehensive sexuality education in the family and during activities outside of school. The family in which a child is brought up must provide sexuality education: this position is supported by 89% of parents and 92% of teachers. At the same time, significantly fewer mothers and fathers (48%) have positive views of their child’s participation in relevant informal activities outside of school, such as workshops, lectures, online courses; a quarter of them (25%) share a negative attitude to this. At focus group discussions, parents and teachers named lack of information about the content of these activities and information about those who conduct the activities—that is, parents’ exclusion and lack of influence or control on their part—as the reason for their distrust. Which means that the level of support for sexuality education in informal circumstances can be different if specific examples are discussed.

Formal comprehensive sexuality education (in school) is supported by the majority. In particular, parents believe this format to be important and relevant because not all of them are confident in their knowledge of specific human sexuality topics, and they are not always ready to discuss them with their children in general. Almost 84% of parents and teachers believe that there should be sexuality education in school. Most respondents support starting it in the first or fifth grade; at focus group discussions, participants also mentioned earlier age for starting formal sexuality education—in kindergarten. However, neither parents nor teachers are satisfied with its present state; in particular, some of them believe that there is no sexuality education in school at all. Nevertheless, some activities which can be viewed as components of sexuality education already take place in school: class hours and elective classes, lectures by specialists invited from the outside (such as medical workers), film screenings, preparation of posters, etc., and teachers are involved in their organization and conduction.

Teachers mostly evaluate their preparedness for the implementation of sexuality education in school positively, but objective indicators reveal the opposite. About 40% are confident of their knowledge about certain (sensitive) sexuality education topics and of their ability to discuss them with students. However, the situation with preparedness is different if we do not look at subjective assessments of the teachers themselves. In the survey and at focus group discussions, some of them reproduced stereotypes, myths and assumptions. In particular, 62% of the surveyed teachers are convinced that girls who wear short hemlines and makeup encourage boys to active courtship by doing so; 33% believe that abortion must be banned in Ukraine; 36% think that non-heterosexual orientation requires treatment; and 19% belive that children with HIV should not study together with other children. If teachers share these assumptions, this can affect not only the way they present the material in class or at extracurricular activities, but also their behavior and treatment of students who, for instance, contradict their views of “normality” by having certain characteristics. In addition, very few of the respondents have received training related to sexuality education at pedagogical HEIs or further professional education courses. After all, these opportunities can be missing in general, since CSE has not been introduced in schools—therefore, there is no need at the government level to prepare teachers for it or organize such training.

The situation with parents’ preparedness to provide sexuality education to their children is similar to the situation among teachers. A third of them are similarly confident of their knowledge on particular topics (32%) and believe that they will not feel uncomfortable while discussing them with their child (30%). However, parents harbor stereotypes and biases as well. For example, 29% believe that young people who have had several sexual partners are licentious, 27% think that having sexual relations before marriage is shameful. Among the surveyed parents, 68% have already had experience of providing sexual education to their child in the family, and another 27% plan to do it. At the same time, about a half of all parents do not prepare for such conversations in any way; on the other hand, 28% read articles online, 21% read specialized books for children, 12% watch blogs by sex pedagogues or psychologists to prepare.

Almost a half of all parents (44%) and teachers (43%) are convinced that they have no barriers in discussing issues of human sexuality with children. Nevertheless, both in the survey and at focus group discussions, the participants spoke about their own psychological unpreparedness, lack of understanding of where to start these conversations and how to have them, worries about lack of interest on the part of children and teenagers or about their negative reaction, etc. In addition, the study participants mentioned that they themselves had no such experience when they were kids, either in the family or at school.

For parents to undertake a leading role in the sexual education of their own child, they require education for themselves, consultations by specialists, information materials. Although in the survey, 68% of parents said they had already provided sexuality education in the family, at focus group discussions, few mothers and fathers had such experience. Some of them had deliberately organized conversations with their children on the topic of deciding to start sexual activity, about safe sex or the menstrual cycle; others had conversations after watching TV shows or films related, for instance, to the topics of early pregnancy or sex. But some parents have never thought about the need to provide sexuality education in the family before, or have postponed it indefinitely. Regardless of their experience, parents themselves spoke about their need for help with information and preparation on how to have these conversations with their child; teachers also spoke about the need to work with parents and teach them. The requests came down to several key points: how to present information correctly depending on the child’s age without harming them; how to start the conversation and what the methodology for having it should be; obtaining experience of conducting sexuality education activities which parents did not get themselves when they were kids. According to the survey findings, 88% of parents would like the school to help with sexual education for their children. For example, they are not confident of their knowledge in some sexuality education topics, so these topics should be explained by specialists, particularly at school, according to the participants of focus group discussions. In addition, focus group participants expressed interest in participating in consultations or workshops with specialists, particularly if these take place at school after working hours; they also expressed their need for social videos on sexuality education and other information materials.

Teachers who would like to be involved in sexuality education for students have requests for their own training, supplementary materials and support on the part of the Ministry and other participants of the education process. 91% of the respondents would find textbooks and other class materials useful: at focus group discussions, teachers said that textbooks currently did not contain enough information on topics that are part of sexuality education, so they needed to additionally look it up on the internet or in other sources. 80% or more teachers also believed it would be useful for them to take a course in sexuality education, participate in workshops about the approaches and methods of conducting the relevant classes with students, to learn about the experience of implementing sexuality education from their colleagues who have already had this experience. The majority did not receive the relevant training when they studied at universities or participated in further professional training courses. However, some teachers at focus group discussions said that they were interested in this issue, had searched for relevant materials and recommendations online, referred to specialized books, etc. So, at the moment, the level of their preparedness depends to a large extent on the teacher’s own initiative and their interest in the topic in general. Among other requests, teachers also mentioned having a separate organization which they could address to receive consultations on how to conduct classes or to get advice, invite specialists from the organization to teach classes; and support from the MES: its confirmation that sexuality education must be present in school and methodological recommendations on its implementation.

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