I am from the Dublin city comhairle and am a member of the physical health group. I will briefly discuss the surveys we carried out recently on the implementation of SPHE and RSE in secondary schools in Ireland. Some 354 young people took part in our surveys, which were carried out this year. We did two surveys, one on SPHE and one on RSE. The SPHE survey was for students from first, second and third year in secondary school and the RSE survey was for fourth, fifth and six years. Of the 354 students who took the survey, 134 students from 68 schools in 12 counties took the SPHE survey and 220 students from 94 schools in 13 counties took the RSE survey, so there was a good representation of schools in the country. If one examines the results, one can see there was a good balance between male and female participation in the survey and, in general, a good representation of different age groups.
On the SPHE survey, 86% of students surveyed said they had SPHE classes in 2009, 84% had SPHE classes once a week and 91% of those students said SPHE is a timetabled class, which is in accordance with the Department of Education and Science guidelines. We asked students if they were aware of the SPHE policy in their schools because, under the law, every school should have one. Only 37% of students were aware that they had such a policy, 8% said they did not have one and 55% said they were unaware of the policy. Overall, only 13% of students responded to the question regarding their involvement in the development of the SPHE curriculum in their schools.
We also asked students many questions on how they think SPHE has affected their daily lives and if it has taught them anything. We asked them if it had helped to develop their personal and social skills, and 38% of students said it had, 30% said it had not and 32% were unsure. Another question was whether SPHE had helped to develop a student's self-respect and self-confidence, and 46% of students said it had. We asked students if it helped them to make better decisions, and 56% said it had. Finally, we asked students if gave them the chance to think and talk about interesting subjects, and 52% of students said it had. Overall, one can see students feel SPHE is helping them to make better decisions and is giving them the environment to talk about issues which they find interesting.
Of the 220 students who took part in our RSE survey, only 25% received RSE classes in 2009 and 75% got none. Some 50.5% of students have never had an RSE programme in their schools, and those who are receiving RSE classes have, on average, only one class a week. In the majority of cases, that is, 72% of students, RSE is not a timetabled class so it is being taught through other subjects. In 32% of cases, RSE is taught through religion and in 21% of cases it is taught through SPHE. It is also taught through science, biology, home economics, social education, health education and life skills.
Of those students who are being taught RSE, 45% said they were taught through guest speakers who came to their schools. The main issues which they discussed were contraception, sexually transmitted infections, crisis pregnancy and abstinence. The guest speakers came from a variety of backgrounds, including medicine, the Crisis Pregnancy Agency and religious groups. We asked students if they found the speakers useful, and more than 50% said they found them useful or very useful.
I wish to refer again to the fact that in 72% of cases RSE is not a timetabled class and is being taught through other subjects, especially religion. Many of the guest speakers are from religious groups. We can see the Catholic Church still has a strong influence on the RSE programme. Some students expressed concern about this. One student said after getting a talk in his or her school, he or she interpreted the message as being that God's input into sex was quite bad and that the speaker ridiculed homosexuality. Another student said a religious speaker said not to have sex before marriage. A student who attended a talk given by a Catholic youth worker said the speaker provided him or her with untrue facts, gave misguided information, only gave the teaching of the Catholic church and was totally biased. We will refer to this point again later in the presentation.
Similar to the SPHE survey, we asked students for their opinion on whether they think RSE is important to them in school, and more than 65% said they agreed that is very important in school. We asked students whether they agreed that RSE covered all the important relationship and sexuality topics which they need to know at this stage of their lives, and only 40% of students agreed with it, which demonstrates that they think there should be more information on the RSE curriculum.
We asked students what should be done to improve the relationships and sexuality education and the following are some of the suggestions we received. The teaching of RSE should be made mandatory; there should be a wider, more in-depth curriculum; there should be more interesting, fun teaching methods; better trained teachers to deliver RSE; more open debates led by young people; more guest speakers; and more focus on mental health issues. Some students even suggested that RSE should be made a mandatory subject or an examination subject because in this way schools would not be able to ignore the subject and would have to put more emphasis on it.
I will conclude the survey results by citing a comment made by one of the students who completed the survey that summarises the reason we decided to carry it out and what we hope to achieve from it. This student said: "Actually teach it. Have a variety of discussions, questions, workshops etc. Teach us everything about relationships and sexuality, don't leave bits out." This is a student's plea for the committee's help. I will hand over to Ms Dara Dunne-Lambe who will speak about how the committee can assist us.