Keeping girls at school may reduce teenage pregnancy and STIs – but sex education doesn’t

Nov 9, 2016 by

from The Conversation:

Worldwide, more than 65m adolescent girls have no access to school. And it’s not just poorer countries that suffer from bad education. In the UK, one in five young people don’t complete post-16 education, making it one of the worst performing countries in league tables measuring how well young people are educated. This affects not only life chances but also health outcomes and well-being.

Studies conducted as far afield as the US, Norway and rural South Africa, for example, have suggested that encouraging school attendance can help young people avoid early sexual activity – and girls to avoid unplanned pregnancy. But this has never been confirmed by experimental evidence – until now.

A comprehensive Cochrane review of studies from around the world combined the data from more than 55,000 young people aged on average between 14 and 16. And it has shown that providing a small payment or giving away a free school uniform can incentivise the young to stay in school for longer, especially in places where there are financial barriers to attending.

Most significantly, it also reveals that the approach could prevent three in every ten pregnancies among that age group globally, and may also delay sexual activity and reduce sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in both girls and boys – although further high quality studies are needed to confirm this. Additionally, it suggests that the mainstay of the current approach – “sex education” – isn’t working to achieve these ends.

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