Sex education should include teaching children about sexual pleasure in order to cut teenage pregnancies, according to an influential lobby group.
The Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG) was involved in pushing for the compulsory sex education lessons to be rolled out in primary and secondary schools next year.
The group was set up to advise the Government on its current Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, which ends next year and is on course to fall dramatically short of its target to halve teenage conceptions.
Now it wants a new Teenage Pregnancy Strategy to include frank discussions of sexual pleasure in order, it says, to help children make responsible decisions about sex.
The suggestion was backed by sexual health charity Brook, a member of TPIAG.
Brook’s Chief Executive, Simon Blake, said: “We need a grown-up conversation with young people.
“We need to make sure they are having sex when they are ready and for the right reasons, are able to enjoy it and take responsibility for it.”
Among the members of TPIAG is Professor Roger Ingham of the University of Southampton, one of the authors of a controversial NHS sex education leaflet distributed to teachers and youth workers earlier this year.
The leaflet, entitled Pleasure, says children need to learn about sexual pleasure, encouraging discussions about “experimentation in sexual relationships” and how condoms can be used “to enhance sexual pleasure”.
When news of its distribution emerged earlier this year family campaigner Dr Trevor Stammers said: “It is unbelievable that this is being sent to schools”, he said.
“I’d like to know what scientific evidence there is to back this up.
“There are an awful lot of overpaid and under-occupied health promotion officers around who are obsessed with sex.”