Youth Activist Leadership Council (YALC) organized a practicum on ‘Sexual and Reproductive Health Education in Nepal,’ an interactive section between Environment and Health teachers and YALC members including two students of National College on June 25.

The organizers said the main objectives of the program were to assess the scope of EPH (Environmental, Population and Health) education in Nepal and understand the present status of the curriculum on sex and reproductive education in school levels.

YALC has been working since February of this year advocating the right and need based comprehensive sex education in Nepal.The organization has hired a trained teacher and is regularly organizing peer discussions among youth on several issues related to sexual and reproductive health.

“At present sex education is taught to students only from grade nine. To make it effective, however, students need to study the subject matter from grade three,” informed Tarun Napit, a teacher of Little Flower Higher Secondary School.

“From my own experience, to impart sex education to students properly the teachers must be open so that students participate in discussions comfortably.”

Myunik Panthi, a teacher of Lyola Higher Secondary School, Old Baneshwor, said that social and cultural background has totally affected sex education.

Students have lots of queries regarding physical and biological changes but they don’t feel comfortable to ask. It’s all because of the narrow-minded society in which they grow up.

Panthi added, “Both students and teachers hesitate while discussing sex. If we look at the course content, there is only slight mention of reproductive system at lower secondary level and only passing references on sex education. So, to make it effective, there should be broader coverage of subject matters on sex education in the curriculum depending on the age group of the students.”

“Some of the students try to avoid the topic as they feel awkward. So it is better if sex education is included in detail from grade five,” informed Suchitra Subedi, a teacher of Little Flower Secondary School.

Chakra Pani, a teacher at Novel Academy, said that in the curriculum, more attention is given to reproductive education but references on sex are significantly less.

Deepak Ghimire, a student of Development Studies of National College, shared that during their research they found that different schools use different approaches while teaching sex education.

In one school, they found that the teacher taught sex education to the students of class two by modifying it to make it lighter whereas some schools didn’t even teach the subject although it is included in their curriculum.

At the same time, Rukh Gurung, the president and co-founder of YUWA announced that the organization is going to launch a book-ting project.

Under the project, more than a thousand books from ten to fifteen colleges and schools would be collected by showing them documentary films until September 15.

They are planning to open a library at Jeevan Jyoti Higher Secondary School, Sangjha, Manakamana VDC and also hand over the collected books to that library.

“We are also planning to teach them how to manage the library” added Gurung.

source: Republica(2011),"Sexual and Reproductive Health Education ",Republica, 27 June 2011