An ur­gent call by Non-gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions for hu­man sex­u­al­i­ty to be in­clud­ed in the school cur­ricu­lum to re­duce the alarm­ing rate of teen preg­nan­cies and be giv­en top pri­or­i­ty has gone out to the Gov­ern­ment last Fri­day.Speak­ing at Ad­vo­cates for Safe Par­ent­hood Im­prov­ing Re­pro­duc­tive Eq­ui­ty (As­pire) break­fast meet­ing to ho­n­our the com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Women's Day held on March 8, at the Crowne Plaza ho­tel, first vice-pres­i­dent of Na­tion­al Par­ent Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) Mau­reen Tay­lor-Ryan, made a fer­vent plea for Health and Fam­i­ly Life Ed­u­ca­tion (HFLE) to be a "stand alone" sub­ject to be taught from nurs­ery to sec­ondary schools in Trinidad and To­ba­go."I know there are many teach­ers who have prob­lems with and do not want to ad­dress the sex­u­al/bi­o­log­i­cal com­po­nent of HFLE," Tay­lor-Ryan said.She said that she was sure there were spe­cial in­ter­est groups will­ing to as­sist As­pire in the HFLE ini­tia­tive.She re­vealed that STIs (sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted in­fec­tions), re­la­tion­ships and the per­vad­ing fear of vi­o­lence were ma­jor con­cerns for our youth.

"We can­not close our eyes to the fact and say that young peo­ple are not sex­u­al­ly ac­tive," Tay­lor-Ryan added."We can­not say there is no vi­o­lence in schools. With vi­o­lence come fear, so we must sup­port the gov­ern­ment in im­ple­ment­ing the HFLE pro­gramme." she said.While T & T was ranked third in the Com­mon­wealth in gen­der eq­ui­ty, in the Roy­al Com­mon­wealth So­ci­ety and Plan UK for Com­mon­wealth 2011 Gen­der Equal­i­ty Re­port, teenage preg­nan­cies, STIs, vi­o­lence, ex­ploita­tion, health care and dis­crim­i­na­tion were ma­jor chal­lenges to be ad­dressed at As­pires's themed Ed­u­ca­tion, Train­ing Ad­vo­ca­cy Path­way to Achiev­ing Ex­cel­lence sem­i­nar.

Fam­i­ly Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go pres­i­dent, Dr Jacque­line Sharpe, dis­closed a dis­con­cert­ing trend that the lev­el of preg­nan­cies among un­der 16 ado­les­cents, 64 per 1,000 live births did not change for 25 years."There is still an enor­mous amount of work to do in es­tab­lish­ing com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al­ly ed­u­ca­tion," Sharpe said.There was al­so a prob­lem of sex­u­al mo­lesta­tion of ado­les­cent girls by their ado­les­cent male peers she added. "There's a de­vel­op­ing at­ti­tude among young men that girls can just be made to do what the boys want them to do."Sharpe said that the In­ter­na­tion­al Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­ca had de­vel­oped a cur­ricu­lum that that dealt with gen­der, HIV, sex­u­al­i­ty and rights ad­vo­ca­cy and was avail­able to NGOs, As­pire, FPA and Unicef for adop­tion.