Analysis and evaluation of sex education in the compulsory education courses in China

Objective To analyze the contents about the sex education in the textbooks and the curriculum standards of compulsory education,and to provide suggestions for the future development.Methods With "International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education" as a reference,the curriculum standards of compulsory education and the textbooks published by People's Education Press were studied,based on the method of Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM) combined with textbook analysis and evaluation scheme of the University of Sussex.Results In general,seven courses including Chinese contained the contents of sex education,covering five concepts with 19 themes of sex education.Four important themes were not included,namely,sex,sexuality and the life cycle of sex,sex behavior and sex reaction,pregnancy prevention and long-term commitment,marriage and parenting.The discussions on each theme of the two core concepts concerning relationship and values,attitudes and skills were relatively insufficient in depth.The textbooks manifested unevenly to show different sex-related knowledge,focusing more on the relationship and body's growth,and more was shown in the political course and biology ones branched curriculum or arts courses,and a couple of super-standard situations could be found in five courses like biology.Conclusion "Primary and Secondary School Students Sexuality Education Guidelines" should be amended to strengthen the sex education by multi-disciplinary correlation under a clear unified education guideline.