Sex Education in Year 3 ?

[TheBFactor]

The topics for this term in PSHCE - mention SEX education.

My son is in Year 3 and not even 8 years old yet - could someone please explain to me what they "teach" under this topic ?

Our school is pretty useless (yes, an OFSTED Outstanding 5* school that is rubbish at informing parents about anything) - so please help me out with some info.

Much appreciated.

if I remember
it was about WHAT boys and girls are
and reinforcing the point that NOBODY touches their genitals without their consent
and the inklings of where babies come from to reduce the impact of playground gossip
NOTHING to be worried about

With the where babies come from are we talking about an explanation of sperm and eggs, here etc ?

I think that bit is in year 6
that is certainly the one where boys and girls see separate videos and get separate information

I haven't done sex education as such with my year 3s, but I do expect them to know that a mum animal carries a baby animal. Mammals breast feed their babies with their milk (titter titter) and all animals have a mum and a dad, even if they don't live together.

I had a very awkward conversation with a child whose younger sibling was created in vitro, and HAS NO DAD. We decided to agree to disagree...

I think you should trust that no teacher would willingly expose small children to sexually explicit information. The Daily Mail has a whole thing going on- implying we teachers are perverts who want to damage young children.

You cannot be a primary school teacher without taking on the care and responsibility of the children. We're called Loco Parentis for a reason.

Thanks, that's reasurring.

My son often sees me changing clothes, topless, in underwear, etc. He was breastfed until he was 3.5, has absolutley no idea that breasts could ever be for anything other than feeding babies, animal or human Hardly ever sees anyone breasfeeding, but when he does, it's perfectly normal to him.

I have watched boys in his class at age 7 giggling at the poster of a woman exposing a bit of cleavage and my son asked me why they were laughing

I reckon he is just very innocent and young for his age, and that's how I would like to keep it until we as parents are ready to tell him or he asks questions. He does knows he grew up in something called a womb (not in my stomach !), as he used to ask about it often when he was younger, etc.

But he has never asked how the baby gets there in the first place !

He is not ready to be told about fertilisation. I am sure one of his better "informed" mates will tell him soon enough, which is fine. He may at that stage come home and ask us more questions.

I just don't wish the topic to be introduced by other adults when he is blatantly NOT mature enough to deal with the topic.

I agree that many teachers are great (I am a former college lecturer so learned to be very diplomatic with a range of people as I am still involved in adult education) unfortunately my son attends an Ofsted Outstanding school which is far from Outstanding in teacher quality and far from diplomatic.

Once you lose trust in the system, that's it, every little thing becomes a worry.

I do understand that both schools and parents SHOULD be worried about playground myths, etc as the UK still maintains it's no. 1 position in Europe in the number of teenage pregnancies.

In Holland the age of consent is far lower (I think 12 ?) yet very few teenage pregnancies.

I think that says a lot about our culture and how both children and adults deal with sexual topics/sexualisation here in the UK.

Where are you? We have a new program introduced recently by our LA. It is called SRE - sex and relationship education - and it starts from nursery.

It is age appropriate - the emphasis is on relationships really at the early age. It didn't get contentious until Year 2, when the module on bodies came up. Some parents objected to this and took their children out, but I've no problems with my son learning the correct names of genitals.

The school ran a seminar on the cirriculumn for this, and all the materials are available for parents to look at in advance. As far as I can see, it has a strong healthy emphasis on relationships, and I think that's really the important bit.

Our old school did it in Y4 and Y5.

The Y4 lessons focussed on growing up. The year was split into male and female and each group did a lesson called "Girl Talk" and "Boy Talk". Girl Talk was about periods and how girls bodies changed when they grow up. (breasts, pubic hair,hormones,zits etc) Boy talk was about how boys change when they grow up- changes in voice, hair, hormones etc

The Y5 boy session explained wet dreams, masturbation, erections and sex. The Y5 girls session explained sex, masturbation and childbirth. They also learned about contraception(pill and condoms) but not mention on STIs.