Quality sex education can act as rape prevention. Sex and relationship education is one of the areas that young people really value in education. A new study has found that it also has a major impact on students' attitudes and can help prevent sexual violence: Konsent NGO calls for systemic change.

Sex education workshops "When they does not want it" for children from eighth and ninth grades (13 - 15 years old), which schools could use for free within the project, and an impact study of these workshops by sociologists from Socionaut. These are the main outputs of the project, which is currently being finalised by Konsent z.s.

 

 

Good quality sex education workshops work to prevent sexual violence and develop children's communication and critical thinking skills. An impact analysis of sex and relationship education workshops (in CZ language only) examined the impact of 30 workshops and found, for example, that after attending, learners' critical attitudes about whether pornography is a good source of information about sex increased by up to 16% in the long term.  A fifth of learners also changed their minds after the training, believing that if someone stops resisting the pressure, they are consenting to sex. 10% of learners also changed their minds in thinking that starting to have sex with someone who is sleeping is rape. Control groups who did not take the workshop did not experience a similar shift in attitudes. 

"We finally hold a clear argument in our hands. Systemic improvement of sex education will have a positive effect not only on children but also on the state's budget. After just one such workshop, children are already showing a shift in their understanding of sexual violence, its prevention and victim assistance. There are 12,000 rapes every year, so we can prevent so many rapes that its victims would fill a football stadium every year," says the director of the NGO Konsent, Johanna Nejedlová. Since its establishment in 2016, Konsent has trained more than ten thousand children in primary and secondary schools thanks to the support of the Norway Grants. Most of the children are in the 8th and 9th grades of basic school - children who are often experiencing their first relationships. "From the immediate feedback we have a clear idea of how positive the workshop is for the children and what they can take from it. But we missed the information with the time lapse - how do they then manage to process and integrate everything into their lived experience? We finally know the answer," adds Nejedlová.

The study was conducted in two phases: a two-phase quantitative survey and qualitative observation directly at the workshops. First, questionnaires measured the attitudes of 678 students before the workshop. After three months, the same students responded again. The overall analysis shows a positive shift in three areas. Awareness, communication skills and critical thinking. "After the workshops, the total number of topics associated with sex education increased. At the same time, the number of students who could not answer the questions also decreased. The most significant increase was in the representation of sexual violence and its prevention. Awareness of sources of help for sexual violence also increased," says Martin Dolský from Socionaut. "The long-term impact of the workshop can therefore be assessed as positive. The change in attitudes reaches 5-15% in the desired direction in most questions, while the shift is much smaller in the control groups," Dolský adds.

"During the workshops, we talk in an interactive way about the stereotypes and myths surrounding sex and sexual violence. For example, whether it is possible to withdraw consent during sex. We debate about porn and how it can distort our ideas about sex in real life. We practice the importance of open communication in relationships. This is the only way to ensure that we know whether we are crossing someone else's boundaries and at the same time we can set our own," adds Marcela Poláčková, co-author of Children Want to Know Too and an expert in sex education.

The analysis examined the impact of one workshop. "It is clear that the impact will be much greater when the whole system of sex education is finally changed and it is not just a one-off workshop, but regular education. This is still lacking in many schools. Even during our research we found that for most children the main sources of information are the internet, TV and friends. And we all know how far from reality this image of sex can be," says Johanna Nejedlová, describing the reasons for Konsent's efforts to improve the quality of sex education systemically, which it is discussing with the Ministry of Education. One of the efforts is a support petition for improved sex education signed by almost 10,000 people. Consent also trains students and teachers in primary, secondary and higher education. There is also increasing interest from teachers in the 8 prepared sex education lessons that are available on konsent.cz for free to all.

Most interesting data:

• 16% more students do not consider porn to be a good source of information
• 12% more students say porn doesn't show what relationships look like in reality

 

disagree with the following statements after attending the workshop:

• "Oral sex is not sex" 17% more students
• „Boys still want sex” 10% more students
• „All girls love to be conquered by boys” 10% more students
• „Starting sex with someone who is asleep or not fully conscious is not rape” 10% more students

Photo: Konsent and norwaygrants.cz

Financial mechanism: Norway Grants

Programme: Human Rights

More about project: When they does not want it