Sex education for 5-year-olds in UK

Children as young as five are to get sex lessons in UK schools, in a bid to cut the soaring number of teen pregnancies.

Children as young as five are to get sex lessons in UK schools, in a bid to cut the soaring number of teen pregnancies.

UK Schools Secretary Ed Balls said from 2011, all primaries and secondaries would have to offer personal, social and health education classes under the new proposals.

Five-year-olds are to get lessons on the differences between boys and girls.

Secondary school pupils will be taught about pregnancy, contraception, HIV and gay relationships.

Lessons of Life: Five-year-olds will be taught the difference between boys and girls.

And parents will lose the right to take them out of sex education classes after they are 15.

Said Balls, "This means every young person will receive at least one year of sex education before they are 16."

The move comes amid a 12 per cent rise in the number of abortions performed on under-16s from 3,658 in 2001 to 4,113 last year.

But Margaret Morrissey of campaign group Parents Outloud condemned ministers for "infringing parents' rights".

And the move will be unpopular with church schools, especially the gay lessons.

But Balls said, "You can teach the promotion of marriage and that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage, but you can't deny young people information about contraception outside of marriage.

The same arises in homosexuality."