Anal sex and use of porn in PHSE - is 11 too young?

[CaptainCaveMum]

I genuinely can’t work out if I’m being Pearl clutchy or this is a reasonable concern.
My DD is 11 and was told about anal sex and oral sex in class last week. No details were given, it was on a slide alongside other sexual activities that she couldn’t remember apart from PiV sex. There was no context given or explanation. Also there was reference made to using pornography.
I feel real uncomfortable that my young DD (who still plays with dolls) is being given this information as if they are mainstream activities that are ‘normal’ in a loving relationship. And unhappy they were given no context around the moral and heath and social issues. And if my DD hadn’t mentioned it, I would have no idea this was covered.
What would you do? Am I being precious? Or are these reasonable concerns?

Yes I think that might be a good starting point. If the school isn't following government guidelines they will have to listen to your concerns. I'm just upset for you and your DD. I feel very strongly that young women are being conditioned to engage in practices that can harm them.

Sounds like they have none specialists teaching the subject which is not always ideal. In the school I was teaching at the students had a consistent teacher even if they weren’t specialists. Do they rotate teachers for topics? I wouldn’t normally teach sex Ed until I had built up a relationship with a class. I left a year and half year ago.

My school was considered more conservative in our LEA. We tended to teach topics at least on year later than LEA suggested. Porn and anal sex were on our scheme of work but not until year 11. Porn would be taught within the contexts of how does media portray unrealistic expectation and what impact does that have. We’d do a starter activity with various scenes you might see in everyday films eg wedding, shopping with friends, going to school and ask if they were realistic and then ask how might they use this knowledge to be critical of porn and consider how porn may impact on how individuals may view their own sex life and body confidence. We might show clips of normal films but obviously not porn. We did lessons from year 8 on sexting, with focus on body image, emotions, consent, controlling your own media and the law. Anal sex was taught within the context of attitudes and myths about sex, for example we would ask students in friendship groups to put a statement along a line to show if they agreed or disagreed with the statement, I would wandering around the room and discuss it within the small groups and then I would ask people to volunteer to share the information with the class and tell me what else had been said to me without name students if any key points or themes weren’t volunteered to be shared with the class. Interestingly females students always strongly agreed that m bb males want anal sex while the males thought only a few people would want to try it.

Porn and anal sex may have been raised in earlier years by other students mostly as an anonymous question in the box. My answers would be factual eg anal sex is putting a penis in the rectum (hole people poo from) and it has an increased risk of transmitting STIs.

I would ask for a meeting with the head of PSCHE to discuss the sex and relationships scheme of work. As a parent I would want to know how much time do they devote to relationships, this includes all relationships, what do they cover in each year, do they cover consent, where to get help for specific issues now and as adults, domestic violence and coercion. Are students just told stuff or do they explore the information and issues? Are they repeatedly reminded who is school they can seek for help? Check out the new government guidelines too.

Thanks so much @Selfsettling3 that’s really informative.

Yes it’s different teachers all the time. Unfortunately I can’t access the local or national scheme of work as I need a PSHCE login to do that. Is there a public link for the new government guidelines? I can only find ones from last summer.

Sorry I’ve stopped teaching now so don’t know. I every much doubt that they have changed since last summer as they had just been created.

I have talked with my children about porn, anal sex and other things. My two children are 14 & 11.

I decided I wanted them to hear it from me. They have known about periods etc since they were little.

I have always explained it in an age appropriate way.

Kids hear all sorts of things at school from their peers much 'worse' than this.

As parents it is our role to prepare our children

I’d be wanting to see what the children were shown and then decide what to f dat I next

The sad (and very worrying) thing is that many issues linked to sex and relationships education have been gradually moved further down secondary school because waiting until later years means it's actually too late for many students.

Moving content earlier means that, assuming the PSHE programme is resourced well and staff are appropriately skilled and supported in PSHE teaching, students get factual information and are best able to protect themselves.

I have to say, sometimes I've looked at our PSHE topics and felt quite disturbed that we have to cover them, but then I look at the experiences of students, the incidents we deal with and realise why we have to do it.

OP I would contact the school and ask how the topic was covered.

I agree with Selfsettling3's post.

Unfortunately, as soon as kids enter secondary school, they have virtually unlimited access to each other's phones, and input of older siblings and friends. And while adults reluctantly traipse around uncomfortable topics, these kids are already being exposed to much worse.

It's still not up to schools to do this though. The schools decide what and when to discuss. The point you missed, the point of the thread, was that there was no discussion and the child was left feeling confused. There are right ways of discussing these topics - this was not the right way.

Update. So turns out another parent got to the school before me and apparently the school has admitted it probably wasn’t ideal so will update their material. Which is great for the other kids and parents ... and leaves me feeling vindicated ... but doesn’t put the genie back in the bottle. It’s so shit when schools do this kind of unthinking stuff and leave parents to pick up the pieces.