Schools can engage approved external trainers for sexuality education programmes

SINGAPORE – Seven schools engaged four approved external providers to conduct sexuality education programmes in schools last year, said Senior Minister of State for Education Indranee Rajah.

Ms Indranee was responding to a question asked by Nominated Member of Parliament Prof Tan Tai Yong in Parliament today (Jan 19), about the number of external providers conducting sexuality education programmes in school currently.

There were no free-of-charge programmes from 2011 to last year. Since 2009, schools spent an estimated amount of S$460,000 on such supplementary programmes, or an average of S$8 per student, said Ms Indranee.

MOE Sexuality Education is taught by selected teachers trained in sexuality education. Schools may engage external providers to conduct supplementary education programmes based on the needs of their students.

“MOE has a stringent vetting process to select suitable external providers, trainers and relevant programmes for sexuality education in schools,” said Ms Indranee. “Teachers sit in to observe the programme and provide feedback to MOE on the quality of the trainers and relevance of the programmes”.

In Oct last year, Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) student Agatha Tan shared a letter she had written to her principal on her Facebook page about a sexuality education programme workshop which she attended and said it “seemed to emphasise and enforce traditional gender roles in a relationship”.

Her post and photos of the workshop booklet featured lines such as “a guy can’t not want to look” was shared widely online and prompted HCI to say it would gather feedback from other students on the workshop.

Two days later, the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) came together to look into the feedback by the student. Responding to media queries at that time, the MOE said the workshop is not part of its sexuality programme, which must be taught by sexuality education teachers trained by the ministry.

The provider of the workshop, Focus on the Family Singapore – appointed by the MSF – has been running since 2009.