Going back to the 80s with sex education

I agree wholeheartedly with Jess Phillips (We need to teach girls about good, healthy, happy sex, G2, 13 November), but it won’t be easy.

As a teacher of PSHE in the 1980s, I was in charge of sex education for years 10 and 11. I was in my late 30s then and married with one daughter. The reason it was meaningful to my pupils (feedback was usually positive) was because I had received excellent training from amazing people working for the Hampshire Health Education Centre. These centres had expert resources for teachers, and training was provided. Together, we involved pupils in evaluating a video made with the stars of EastEnders about HIV/Aids, which had just hit the headlines.

Where are these resources now? Not every teacher will want to help pupils with this topic – the relationship between them has to be sound, respectful and appropriate. Also, time must be found on the timetable, which seems more and more difficult. It seems education is regressing towards a more restrictive curriculum, where exam results take precedence over education for life. Good luck, Jess, with your ideas.
Edna Small
Church Fenton, North Yorkshire

• Jess Phillips’ article took me back to my school days, when I would have loved something – anything at all – in the way of sex education beyond the problem pages in women’s magazines.

At my school in Scotland in the 1970s, sex education did not exist. What we did have was one “guidance session” with the school chaplain, a rather forbidding gentleman. I have a clear memory of him towering above us in one of the old-fashioned raised-pulpit-style teacher’s desks and thundering: “I believe in absolute chastity before marriage and absolute fidelity after marriage. Does anybody disagree?” Needless to say nobody did!
Helen MacFadyen
Peterborough

• Stunning pieces from Jess Phillips and Michelle Obama back to back (G2, 13 November). I’d like to invite them face to face with each other at my dream dinner party. I suspect they’d get on brilliantly and I’d hardly get a word in edgeways. Quite right, too.
Alison Leonard
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

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