Sex education in schools

Shortly after the recent incident in Haa of a school girl who abandoned her baby, many people have started calling for the need of proper sex education in schools apart.

The Director General of Ministry of Education, Karma Tshering, he said that ‘’Sex education is obviously taught under life skills curriculum in school even though it is not a part of assessment but it seems like it’s not strictly followed in most of the schools so we are trying our best to make sure it’s regulated.”

Regarding the recent incident, he said, “Apart from lack of sex education, there can be many other reasons as well, as to why this has taken place and therefore we have informed the school and district education officer in particular to follow up on the investigation and we will make sure that the justice is done.

There must have been various compulsions under which this must have taken place and we don’t tolerate such incidents. Some people in schools are simply taking advantage of our innocent students and school is not a place for such things.”

Sex education is taught twice a month. According to WHO, Bhutan a quality education endowed with life skills has been offered to secondary school students of Bhutan to help them tackle the challenge in their societies including prevention of HIV/AIDS. WHO defines life skills as liabilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life.

WHO said that even though, sex education should be taught as a separate subject apart from life skill curriculum keeping in mind, its importance a committee can be formed to spread age appropriate information for different age groups as well as specialize some youths to become a sex education facilitators so as to not burden the teachers in schools.