Sex education materials often come with a strong political or commercial message, warns Wendy Wallace. It’s not just you and him. You’re packing along a loaded revolver.” Pulp fiction? No, a quote from an American sex education video which begins with footage of a man in the advanced stages of dying from AIDS, and concludes by saying that if you have sex before marriage, “you just have to be prepared to die.” While the programme is one of the more over-the-top examples of its kind, it typifies the “fear-based” sex education being promoted by some fundamentalist Christians and far-right political groups in the United States.

But could it happen here? Rachel Thomson of the Sex Education Forum, an umbrella group of organisations based at the National Children’s Bureau, says that in Britain a consensus exists between religious and secular groups that sex education should be based on knowledge, attitudes and skills, rather than the blind terror which appears to be the goal of some American material.

But among the wide range of sex education materials on offer in the UK are a plethora of resources which come free or heavily subsidised from various religious, ethical or commercial interest groups. While few have the rabid character of some American materials, all are working to their own often narrow agenda. In some, the value-based nature of the information is explicit; in others it goes unstated.

One recent arrival on the UK scene is Teen STAR (Sexuality Teaching in the context of Adult Responsibility). Launched in the United States in 1986, Teen STAR is the baby of the US movement for natural family planning led by Dr Hanna Klaus, a Roman Catholic medical missionary. The 17 components of the programme include detailed teaching on the Billings method of contraception (the rhythm method), and promote rigorously observant Catholic values. UK Teen STAR co-ordinator Veronica Pierson has so far run three training courses for teachers in the UK.

Teen STAR’s own research in the United States found that 50 per cent of sexually active young people abstain from intercourse for at least a limited time after the course. But Mrs Pierson says that the materials are not designed to induce fear or guilt but are “within a framework of very positive values”. She taught the course in a Catholic secondary school in south London with, she says, considerable success. “The school gave me the most unsettled and silly fourth form,” she says. “After two or three women’s cycles, the girls began to realise what their own value was. The following year, they provided most of the school prefects and the head girl.”

But despite Mrs Pierson’s insistence that Teen STAR focuses on positive messages, a school pupil in Ireland where the take-up rate has been predictably higher than in the UK wrote an assessment of the course including the statement that “what I was most surprised about was the different sexually transmitted diseases and the different kinds of abortions”. Given its wide-ranging scope, many teachers might question Mrs Pierson’s assertions that the Teen STAR programme is suitable for use in secular schools.

Like Teen STAR, Make Love Last, a teacher’s pack and video produced by Christian Action, Research and Education (CARE), makes no bones about its ideological premise. The pack is “intended to provide teachers with resource materials and ideas to present the case for abstinence from premature sexual relationships outside a permanent committed relationship, ie marriage”. Launched on St Valentine’s Day last year, the resource has sold to over one third of all secondary schools, Alison Farnell of CARE says.

The video is well produced and makes a strong case for virginity, showing sex outside marriage as debased and rather gross. Brian Wakeman, deputy head of South Luton High School, a Christian and an expert on personal and social education, is enthusiastic about Make Love Last. “The film is fresh and amusing,” he says. “Even if you don’t agree with the message, it opens up tremendous opportunities for discussion.”

The materials have been criticised for being unbalanced. But, Alison Farnell says, “we set out to redress the balance. We wanted to affirm the ones who are virgins, to say it’s OK, you’re not abnormal.” While most sex educators would say this was well and good, the pack does have inherent contradictions. Its stress on young people needing to explore emotions and be able to make their own decisions is at odds with the presciptive stance on what that decision should be.

The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child is a longer-standing producer of sex education materials putting the anti-abortion case. They have distributed free sets of fetal models and videos of abortions being carried out are available to schools on request. Their written materials are zealous and evangelical in tone, and the videos extremely distressing.

If, as Mary Porter, head of education and training at the Family Planning Association says, the role of education is to “help young people weigh up very difficult moral issues and make difficult decisions”, then the moral absolutism of materials such as that provided by SPUC is difficult to accommodate. Ann Best, who teaches religious education in St John Fisher High School in Wigan, admits that pupils are horrified by SPUC videos such as Hard Truth, a six-minute film of an abortion taking place. But, she says, “we tell them to keep their emotions out of it. Abortion is a horror and it is wrong.” Mrs Best also tells pupils to exercise compassion, and “not judge your friend or your mother if she has had an abortion or is contemplating one”.

The producers of “pro-life”, pro-marriage and pro-abstinence materials believe that an ethos of liberal permissiveness permeates mainstream sex education materials, and that this is no less morally biased than their own position.

Alongside the moral interest groups come the commercial ones. Probably the best known is Tampax. Tambrands Ltd, the manufacturer, employs a team of trained nurses which visits more than 2,500 schools in the UK and Ireland each year, giving free talks, booklets and samples of tampons. Inevitably, the main focus of all the materials is on menstruation. Of the 29 pages in the Teaching Guide to Puberty and Menstrual Health, 12 are devoted to periods and sanitary protection.

Shirley Potts, deputy head of Merrywood Girls School in Bristol, welcomes the visits from the “Tampax lady”. Mrs Potts says: “She’s wonderful, but we all realise she’s there to sell the product, really.”

The sex education field is increasingly crowded with producers. Most of the manufacturers of sanitary products offer some kind of schools service. Durex has sponsored a guide to sex education for school governors and teachers. Wellcome gives away teaching materials on HIV and Aids. ACET (Aids Care, Education and Training), a Christian-based charity, in conjunction with the Association of British Insurers, has given away 10,000 teachers’ packs on HIV and Aids.

Some of the materials are highly regarded. But the problem for schools is in making informed judgments on what to use. Rachel Thomson of the Sex Education Forum says teachers should not have to pick and choose: “Schools need authoritative sources of local advice and information that they know and can trust.

“Increasingly, they’re being targeted by private companies and even charlatans and moralisers. This is one area of education that we cannot leave to the free market. At the very least, the Office for Standards in Education has a role.”

BYLINE:Sex education materials often come with a strong political or commercial message, warns Wendy Wallace