Accessibility of school health education is an underlying factor for differences in knowledge about sexually transmitted infections of secondary school pupils

Abstract

Health education constituted an individual subject in secondary schools in Slovenia before 1985. Thereafter it was disintegrated and its topics incorporated into different school subjects. Health education topics are required in the extent of 15 hours in upper secondary general education schools, but in the extent of 0 to 18 hours in other secondary school programmes. The present study compared the knowledge about sexually transmitted infections of pupils of two 4-year secondary school programmes with different health education requirements. The results demonstrated that different accessibility of school health education results in distinct differences in knowledge about the existence, sources of infection, symptoms, and protection against sexually transmitted infections between pupils of different secondary school programmes. Despite the general conception of overloaded curriculums, more than two thirds of pupils of both educational programmes expressed the need of receiving more information in sexual education topics, with systematic medical exam selected as the most suitable form of sexual education, closely followed by Biology class, and school project day. The results call for the attention of educational policy makers, as they clearly emphasise the need of establishing systematic and comprehensive school health education for all pupils, not only for those enrolled in the selected secondary school programmes.