Modern Sex Education - PSHE

The teenage pregnancy rate has been falling in England for some years, and has finally halved since the Labour government pledged in 1997 to halve the number of conceptions to girls under 18 by 2010. Last night, we hosted a birthday party for one of our granddaughters, and discovered how education was helping this pledge. She didn't want friends there, so it was not a lavish affair, just fish and chips with their parents, and a cake to follow.

They are both at secondary school now, and the older one had had a lesson in Personal, Social and Health Education, or PSHE, but this seems to have become more explicit since we were younger. A nurse came into the class and proceeded to pass round individual models of the relevant male bits, which she drew from a large bag. "I got a black one," our granddaughter said.

Her mother didn't help by asking if it was bigger than the others. "No," she said, "they were all the same size." The nurse then explained the importance of contraception in preventing anything unwanted, demonstrating with a condom, and the girls had to experiment on their own models.

Then the nurse blew hers up to a huge size, until it burst. "Oh, these must be old ones," she said. "It wasn't meant to do that until I put some oil on." They are certainly thorough. The girls will certainly not forget these lessons. The nurse's name was Annie, and our granddaughter kept remembering her Grannie Annie.