COMPREHENSIVE SEXUALITY EDUCATION

Since our “Comprehensive Sexuality Education Update” article of March this year, and our first “Knowledge Baseline” article of May last year, we have been working hard to bring parents, schools, and educators encouraging news about what they can do in response to the Department of Basic Education (“DBE”) Comprehensive Sexuality Education (“CSE”) Scripted Lesson Plans (“SLPs”).

PARENTS, SCHOOLS AND EDUCATORS HAVE A CHOICE

Parents, schools, and educators need to know that they may choose which learning content to use to teach sexuality education and life skills in the classroom.

The DBE has confirmed that public schools may use alternative learning content and/or programmatic material – i.e. other than the CSE SLPs – to teach Life Skills (“LS”) and Life Orientation (“LO”) as long as it meets the learning outcomes of the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (“CAPS”) for each learning phase and grade.

ALTERNATIVE PROGRAMMES TO DBE CSE

In the past couple of months, we have engaged various owners and/or developers of programmes and learning materials that can be used as alternatives to the DBE CSE SLPs.

Some of these programmes are either fully or partially CAPS compliant for certain grades, while the CAPS alignment of others has not yet been considered (yet still provide useful resources to either substitute or supplement existing LS and/or LO learning materials).

After our consultations, we prepared a summary of alternative programmes. In it, we provide an overview of certain aspects of each, including – content, format of learning material, applicable age groups, cost, and training opportunities. We also checked the extent of each programme’s CAPS compliance with its owners.

If you want to use alternative sexuality education and life skills learning materials in your school, church or other community – and are interested to learn more about alternative programmes – please let us know!

Send us an email at info@causeforjustice.org.

KEEP YOURSELF AND OTHERS INFORMED

• Share this information – that alternative programmes and/or learning materials exist that can be used instead of the DBE CSE SLPs – with other parents and educators, and your school
• Watch our five video shorts – learn why many South African parents, schools and educators have serious and valid concerns with the DBE CSE SLPs.  We answer the following questions:
  1. What is the CSE issue about?
  2. Is there cause for concern?
  3. Is CSE effective at addressing social ills associated with sexual behaviour?
  4. Are the CSE SLPs compulsory for Schools?
  5. What can we do?