What is Comprehensive Health/Sexuality Education?

  • CSE is a curriculum-based process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social aspects of sexuality.
  • CHE is comprehensive when it covers the full range of topics related to human sexuality, rights, and gender, without omitting challenging or sensitive topics.

Qualities of effective CSE are scientifically accurate incremental.

Qualities of effective CSE are scientifically accurate incremental, age and developmentally appropriate, based on human rights and gender equality, culturally relevant and context-appropriate, inclusive of life skills, and transformative.

  • What is sex?
    Sex is about the biology of being male and female.
    Gender is how society expects us to behave as male or female. Gender and culture change over time.
  • Sex and gender are not the same.
  • Sex is also the word people use when they talk about sexual intercourse
  • What is SEXUALITY?
    Sexuality includes all the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of being male or female.
  • Sexuality has physical, psychological, spiritual, social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions.
  • Sexuality is a fundamental part of life: it is the expression of who we are as human beings
  • Sex and sexuality are not the same as a central aspect of being human throughout life encompassing sex, gender identities, and roles, sexual orientation, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy, and reproduction. Sexuality is experienced and expressed in thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles, and relationships. While sexuality can include all of these dimensions, not all of them are always experienced or expressed.
  • Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, legal, historical, religious, and spiritual factors.” (WHO, 2006a)

What is sex?
Sex is about the biology of being male and female. Gender is how society expects us to behave as male or female. Gender and culture change over time. Sex and gender are not the same. Sex is also the word people use when they talk about sexual intercourse

  • When does sexuality begin in a person’s life?
    People express their sexuality from birth to death in so many ways: the way women and men walk, talk, dress, show love to another person, etc.
  • Sexuality is much more than sexual intercourse. You are a sexual person and can express your sexuality even if you do not have sexual intercourse.
    Gender and human rights are critical to understanding sexuality.
  • Young people who believe males should have more power than females are less likely to use condoms, more likely to have multiple sex partners, and be in violent relationships.
  • Young people who work at having gender equality in their relationships through good communication and shared decision-making have lower rates of unplanned pregnancy, HIV, and STIs.

Everyone benefits when men and women are treated equally.

Sexual Health

  • Sexual Health is a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity.
  • Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.
  • For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected, and fulfilled.” (WHO, 2006a)

Sources of Sexual Learning

  • Young people learn about sexuality from a variety of sources
    Sources of sexual learning vary: some are factual, unrealistic, fake news, moralistic many conflicting messages that leave young people confused
  • If parents or the health or education sectors are NOT taking an active role in the sex education of their children, their children will still learn elsewhere
  • Parents have the right, the privilege, to instill their family values in their children and counteract myths and misinformation and communicate clearly their hopes and dreams for their children
  • Children do value the opinions of their parents, even when you think they are not listening, they want guidance and structure from those they trust

What do we mean by Comprehensive?

  • It refers to the breadth and depth of the topics
  • It implies that topics cannot be included or excluded at random. It is a package.
  • Abstinence-only until marriage is NOT an example of comprehensive sexuality education.
  • Sexuality is not to be presented only as risk, danger, and ‘just say no’ but presented in a more balanced, realistic way

Debunking the myths about CSE CSE does NOT

  • Focus on sexual intercourse or encourage young people to have sex
  • Teach young people how to have sex or take away their innocence
  • Follow an abstinence-only-until-marriage approach
  • Disregard abstinence as an option
  • Perpetuate myths about condoms
  • Undermine parents or the authority of families
  • Disregard nor impose cultural or religious values and morals
  • Promote or encourage LGBTI issues, and recruitment.

Evidence on CSE and its benefits When delivered with fidelity, by trained teachers/facilitators using participatory methods extensive evidence suggests CSE:

  • Delays age of sexual debut
  • Decreases the number of sexual partners and frequency of sex
  • increases the use of contraception including condoms
  • reduces misinformation
  • increases correct knowledge about sexuality, relationships, and HIV
  • clarifies and strengthens positive/health-promoting values and attitudes
  • increases skills to make informed decisions and the self-efficacy to act on them
  • improves perceptions about peer groups and social norms
  • increases communication with parents and other adults
  • abstinence-only or abstinence focussed programs do NOT work and are potentially harmful
  • CSE is most impactful when paired with SRH services, commodities and involve parents and community members

In school

  • Training of curriculum developers, school inspectors, managers
    Curriculum scans and reviews
  • Face-to-face and online Pre-service and In-service teacher training
  • Development of scripted lesson plans
  • Training of Teacher Unions and other education/youth stakeholders
  • CSE Orientation course for tertiary students
  • Advocacy for accredited CSE tertiary courses
  • Out of School
    Training of school CSE facilitators and peer educators
  • Resource Package for Out-of-School Young People
  • LNOB: Package for Young People living with HIV (iCAN) and young people with disabilities (Breaking the Silence)
  • Climate Change and CSE
  • TuneMe mobisite tuneme.org
  • We Will edutainment music videos
  • Parent-child communication programmes (Let’s Chat)
    Radio Programmes

CSE’s Value Added CSE

  • CSE’s Value Added CSE can reach large numbers of young people within the 10-24-year-old age range in and out of school over time, hence the importance of scaling up, geographically saturating, and institutionalizing the implementation of CSE in sustainable national systems within and outside the formal education sector.
  • CSE is a true form of prevention in that it aims to impart knowledge, essential life skills, and health-promoting attitudes, and behaviors, often at strategic opportune moments before the information is needed. Thus, its focus is on the development and maintenance of healthy SRHR behaviors, versus the need for behavior change. That said, it also addresses the importance of behavior change and mitigation of negative SRHR at individual, interpersonal, and socio-cultural levels.
  • CSE creates demand for the utilization of SRHR services and commodities need to give CSE a long-term chance to follow through on its theoretical and evidence-based promises