Wales wants to know about the "sex lives" of u-11s

[ResisterRex]

In the Telegraph. A long story which includes asking about children "having sex" and asking them if were “described as male or female at birth” (a new take) and how they'd describe themselves - which seems to either be, or sail close to, self-ID.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/02/sex/

Children as young as 13 being asked if they have had sex in survey
All mainstream secondary schools in Wales are invited to participate in the survey, which is funded by the Welsh Government

One section for pupils in Year 11 to Year 13 - and optional to those in Year 9 and 10, who are aged 13 to 15 - asks “how old were you when you had sexual intercourse for the first time” with answers ranging from “11-years-old or younger”, through each year to 18.

The survey, which took place again last autumn, asks them if they used emergency contraception the last time they had sex, whether they used a condom and whether birth control pills were used.

Another question asks: “Have you ever sent someone a sexually explicit image of yourself?”

Safeguarding concerns
The survey has prompted warnings from parents that safeguarding has "barely" been considered.

Parents' campaign group Safe Schools Alliance UK said that while collecting data was "laudable", the survey had got it “horribly wrong” and it was “shocked at this being done in the name of health”.

“We are alarmed that ‘11 years or younger’ is one of the multi choice answers given for questions such as “at what age did you first get drunk/use cannabis/have sexual intercourse,” said spokeswoman Tanya Carter.

“11-year-olds do not ‘have sex’, they are raped. This has the potential to normalise serious child protection issues.

"A free text box would be better.

"Inclusion seems to have been treated as an add on and safeguarding barely considered at all."

...

In the survey, pupils are not asked for their biological sex, but rather if they were “described as male or female at birth” or what they “identify myself as”.

A third question on if they are a boy or girl includes the option “neither word describes me/I do not want to answer”.

A separate optional survey for Welsh primary school students, used by 76 schools last year, asks children if they are a boy, girl, do not want to answer or “prefer to self-describe”.

The School Health Research Network Survey has received £1.1 million from Mark Drakeford's Labour government since 2019, an investigation by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, shared with The Telegraph, found.

Just leave our children alone. Pleased to see Safe Schools Alliance are all over this.

So what's the goal of this? I don't necessarily have an issue with informational surveys of young people. It might be a good thing to know, for example, if there has been an increase in sexually active kids of 13.

I wonder if they got the same people to write this survey as the Scottish government did

I really don’t understand how those designing and administering the surveys with these questions don’t realise how traumatising it would be for a child to be asked about her or his rape or sexual abuse, especially sat in a classroom amongst their friends and class. The fear, the shame and the trauma all flooding back and so many of these children will have to sit their and pretend they are fine - probably disassociating in order to make it look as though they are ok. What a safeguarding failure this is.

The TG don't do share tokens. I don't think you're allowed to copy and paste it all here either but I suppose it may have been archived somewhere.

Re Scotland, there's this

In January, the Scottish government also faced calls to scrap a similar health and wellbeing census that asked 14-year-olds about anal sex. Ms Carter said: "As with the Scottish survey, no consideration appears to be given to how these questions would be received by abused children."

Re the aim, there's this

A Welsh government spokesman said: “The Student Health and Wellbeing Survey, which takes places every two years, provides high quality data on the health and wellbeing of young people aged 11–16 in Wales. The survey is developmentally-appropriate and forms an important part of our commitment to improving mental health and wellbeing in schools.”

Overall I'd say the suggestion of a free text box would be better as SSAUK say. These kinds of questions in a survey do raise important concerns about children who've been abused. Much, much more thought should be given to all of it from what's reported but especially to victims of sexual abuse.