| ||||||
Quality Schooling has Little Impact on Teenage Sexual Activity |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: A report published in the online open access journal, BMC Public Health, shows that socio-economic situation and the local high school catchment area have a more powerful influence on reported sexual experience among 15 and 16 year olds than classroom discipline or the quality of relationships within schools. This is the first study to attempt to look beyond the formal sex education curriculum and assess whether the way in which schools are run, in terms of their organisation and social relationships, can affect levels of sexual activity amongst pupils. "Schools have the potential to influence their pupils' behaviour through the school's social organisation and culture, as well as through the formal curriculum," said study lead author Dr Marion Henderson from the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow. The results revealed that school level socio-economic factors remain very influential even after individual pupils' socio-economic status is taken into account. Dr Henderson explained: ''School-level socio-economic factors, such as levels of deprivation, do have a big influence. This suggests that an individual who is deprived but attending a school with an affluent catchment area may be discouraged from sexual activity, whilst an affluent individual attending a school with a deprived catchment area may be encouraged towards earlier sexual intercourse." The study was looking at effects of school beyond the sex education curricula.
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
