The only mention we had of masturbation in sex ed consisted of this:
A video - called Living and Growing - in which a teenage lad was wittering on about puberty from his perspective. He mentioned what wet dreams were, then the scene changed to him looking lustily at a Pamela Anderson poster. The narrator then said "What about wanking?" .. The lad, whispering and grinning, said "I don't think you should call it that. Masturbation's the proper term. It's totally normal."
There was no mention of this being normal for females and males (indeed, the video was intended apparently to be shown only for boys and a separate version, featuring a teenage girl, was filmed for girls - which made no mention at all of masturbation). I've since seen a couple of other videos - when I did teacher training for a year - which explicitly talked about masturbation. It actually went as far to show a cartoon of a young woman masturbating - might be the way to go, to be honest.
At age 12 I figured out what it was, I read up my mum's DK health encyclopedia and I panicked - it said, "the normal way for lesbian women to reach orgasm is through clitoral stimulation". I thought that my anatomy was somehow broken as I had figured out that my clitoris was what enabled me to orgasm. It was More magazine that made me realise all women, regardless of sexuality, received pleasure from the clitoris.
At some stage masturbation needs to be discussed properly within sex education lessons as it's likely to be the first proper sexual experience both girls and boys have. Likely some people will think teaching young adults about sexual pleasure will raise the teenage pregnancy rates but it is very possible to understand sex, and to not fall pregnant.. If anything, the more understanding, the better education at appropriate stages, I'd reckon pregnancy and STI rates will fall.
We never ever discussed sex..We watched videos during which the teacher would stare at the floor. We discussed contraception at age 14, and we discussed fertilisation at age 12 in biology but nothing apart from that. I finished secondary in 2009 - I can't imagine things have changed much since then..
I have actually been advised to masturbate by HP before due to gynae health issues. I didn't see the advice as any different to being told to try meditation or relaxation CDs to be honest...