Vol. 559 No. 1
225 Ms F. O'Malley asked the Minister for Education and Science the percentage of post-primary schools currently implementing the relationships and sexuality education programme; the efforts in place to ensure 100% take-up of the programme; if plans are under way at his Department to review the programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25530/02]
A survey of post-primary schools in 2000 showed that 41.5% of schools were implementing RSE in all classes and that 39.5% were implementing RSE in some classes. A more recent survey of schools has been carried out, but results from this are currently unavailable.
Relationships and sexuality education, RSE, is an integral part of social personal and health education. A support service for social personal and health education, SPHE, up to junior cycle was established in 2000 and has been providing training and support to schools in all aspects of SPHE since then. A total of 570 schools have developed links with the service and 420 of these have made provision for a timetabled SPHE programme. The target is that all schools will have begun the implementation of SPHE, which will include RSE, by September 2003. Extra training and support in the RSE element of SPHE is currently being offered to schools by the RSE support service in conjunction with the SPHE support service.
