Full text available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14681811.2010.515097
It is very important that sex and relationships education (SRE) programme developers
attempt to elicit, understand and incorporate young people’s views in the SRE
development and implementation processes. This paper reports the findings of a study
that sought to identify young people’s self-identified learning needs and priorities
regarding sexual health that should be included in school-based SRE. Seven hundred
and fifteen primary and secondary students aged between eight years and over 20 years
old completed a survey between June and September 2007. The questionnaire had
both closed and open-ended items. The open-ended items asked students to provide up
to two questions on sex and relationships; this study briefly reports on the results
of students’ responses. Students raised a total of 535 questions, which were subjected
to quantitative content analysis. This revealed that students asked a wide range of
questions across three major themes of SRE; namely, facts and information, attitudes
and values, and relationships and skills. The most frequently asked questions were on
sexual decision-making (27%), sexual pleasure and enjoyment (20%), relationships
(14%), safer sex and condom use (10%), sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS
(8%) and masturbation (7%). Of these topics, only sexually transmitted diseases and
HIV/AIDS are currently covered in Tanzania’s school curriculum. The results of this
study show that, although students consider HIV/AIDS as one of the important SRE
areas, they want a broader SRE coverage than a purely health-oriented model can offer.
Furthermore, the nature of the questions that students asked exposes some serious
inadequacies in the current SRE programmes in Tanzania. This calls for broad schoolbased
SRE programmes, which should reflect a wider coverage of sexual health than
the present curriculum’s rather narrow focus on HIV/AIDS.