THIS September, more than three years after Niamh Bhreathnach set up a group to advise her on the introduction of a nationwide programme of sex education in schools, nearly 22,000 teachers will finally start to put that programme into place.
The Minister for Education and her officials have hastened slowly, conscious of the sensitivities of a generation of parents weaned on Catholic teaching about sex, with its multiple prescriptions and prohibitions.
Originally, and rather rashly, she promised the programme's implementation would begin in 1995. It proved more painstaking.
It started with the publication of the advisory group's report that year, continued with the guidelines of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment a year ago, and will finish only with the training of the final teachers this June.
The parents booklet published yesterday, Relationships and Sexuality Education: Going Forward Together, is a distillation of the work of the advisory group and the NCCA. It starts with the problems as outlined by the former: the risk of children receiving in adequate and inappropriate information; their existing exposure to sex through the media; the changing roles of men, women and families; and the fact that young people are becoming sexually active at an earlier age.
The booklet emphasises that RSE will always be taught as part of the wider Social, Personal and Health Education programme, which also includes material on diet, alcohol, drugs, safety and social responsibility. Department officials also stress that the programme will be a "menu rather than a prescription" and can be adapted by each school to suit its "characteristic spirit".
In the youngest classes some of the areas to be covered are the different changes taking place in the children's bodies as they grow; recognising and expressing feelings like happiness and sadness making and having friends and coping with "falling out" with those friends.
Children from third to sixth class will learn how babies are conceived and born, with the older classes learning about the act of sexual intercourse, according to the NCCA guidelines. They will also learn about further changes in their bodies, the appropriate expression of their feelings, making healthy and responsible decisions and "evaluating the portrayal of relationships and sexuality in the media."
Junior cycle students at second level schools will learn about the physical and emotional changes, they go through at puberty; fertility, conception and pregnancy; sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS; "an awareness of the consequences and implications of sexual activity"; appreciation of the roles of women and men in society, and, awareness of discrimination and sexual orientation,
Senior cycle students will learn about family planning; treating; women and men with equal respect; sexual harassment; sexual abuse, rape, and legal rights "making moral and healthy choices regarding sexual activity an awareness of what constitutes a loving relationship; the long term commitment involved in marriage; parenting and family life".