80 per cent students want sex education: Survey

THIRUVANATHAPURAM: 80 per cent of students welcome sex education in schools as they believe it would help them interact better with opposite sex, a survey conducted among students here have shown.

About 58 per cent prefer co-education in sex education classes and 33 per cent underwent sex education from school, said the study conducted among 452 students from four selected schools by ‘Thrani’, the counselling centre of Foundation for Integrated Research For Mental Health.

The outcome could be generalised for whole of the state as questions asked were of common pattern concerned with thinking of students, V Mukunda Das, Dean, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management- Kerala, said while releasing the study.

Stating that results were disturbing in many aspects, Das said most of the children were victims of sexual abuse in one form or the other and 88 per cent believe sex education would protect them from sexual abuse.

Nearly 31 per cent of the survey participants had been sexually abused at some point of time, Das said adding ‘this is a pointer towards a critical social reality’.

Majority of the students lacked proper knowledge about sexually transmitted disease, HIV Aids, he said.