Sex education
Sex education, also called sexuality education or sex ed, is instruction about human sexuality — its anatomy, development, relationships, and social meanings — together with the knowledge and skills needed to manage sexual health. It is provided in schools, through public health campaigns, and by parents and caregivers[^c1], and much of it also occurs informally, through conversations with friends, family, religious leaders, or the media[^c2]. Its scope runs from the biology of reproduction through consent, contraception, sexually transmitted infections, gender and sexual diversity, relationships, and digital life, and its stated goals commonly include preventing HIV and other infections and unintended pregnancy, supporting healthy relationships, and enabling informed, autonomous decisions.
Two broad approaches have structured the field since the late twentieth century. Comprehensive sexuality education teaches about all aspects of sexuality, including contraception, consent, and sexual diversity, and is widely supported by health organizations for its effectiveness in improving public health outcomes[^c3]. Abstinence-only until marriage education teaches abstinence outside marriage and typically excludes contraceptive instruction; evidence does not support its effectiveness[^c4]. The contest between these models has shaped funding streams, state mandates, and international HIV programming, and it remains the central axis of political dispute.
The content and delivery of sex education vary widely between and within countries. Programmes may form a full course or a single unit within biology, health, or physical education, and some schools offer none at all. Provision is shaped by national curricula and laws, state and local school boards, funding streams, parental consent and opt-out rules, and the strength of religious and cultural opposition. Debates over age-appropriateness, LGBTQ+ inclusion, and parental rights have become more confrontational in recent years, and in some jurisdictions legislatures have restricted what may be taught. Access increasingly depends on geography rather than on any shared standard: in 2026 the United States remained without a federal mandate, with only a handful of states requiring comprehensive instruction, while England's revised statutory guidance came into force and Northern Ireland continued to report inconsistent provision. The legislative pressure was measurable: of 174 sex education bills introduced in United States state legislatures in the first half of 2026, 54% were restrictive in some way[^c23], and 22 states have enacted laws since 2022 that exclude or restrict LGBTQ educational content or require parental notification before such topics are discussed in school[^c24].
International organisations treat access to sexuality education as a matter of human rights and public health. UNESCO, WHO, UNFPA, UNAIDS, UNICEF, and UN Women jointly promote comprehensive sexuality education as a necessary core intervention — to prevent HIV among young people and to empower them to recognise and address violence, abuse, and elements of their sexual health and well-being[^c5] — and global status reporting documents both the spread of national policies and the persistent gap between policy and classroom practice. A 2026 UNESCO multi-country study in Armenia, Buenos Aires Province in Argentina, Lao PDR, Lagos State in Nigeria, and Namibia found that learners who received rights-based comprehensive sexuality education reported more positive relationships, greater self-confidence, and a stronger sense of inclusion[^c7], extending the evidence base beyond health outcomes to relational ones. Alongside this, the field's evidence base has broadened in other directions: a meta-analysis of pleasure-inclusive sexual health interventions found a moderate, positive, and significant effect on condom use[^c25], and a cluster randomised trial in Uganda found that an eight-week peer-led programme significantly increased sexual abstinence and reduced multiple partnerships, alcohol and drug use, and unprotected sex[^c26]. Digital delivery has also produced long-term evidence: a 45-month randomised controlled trial in Kenya found that the Tumaini smartphone game significantly improved the theory-based determinants of condom use, with effects sustained 45 months after initial exposure[^c34]. Not all rigorous trials point the same way. The Positive Choices whole-school intervention in English secondary schools — combining relationships and sex education with student councils, campaigns, service reviews, and parent information — did not prevent non-competent sexual debut or affect secondary outcomes, a null result its authors attributed to weak fidelity of the whole-school elements and to comprehensive provision already present in control schools[^c27], a reminder that programme design and implementation conditions, not content alone, determine whether benefits appear.
The field remains sharply contested, and 2026 showed movement in opposite directions at once. Peru repealed its comprehensive sexuality education guidelines in favour of a "scientific, biological and ethical" approach incorporated into the national curriculum[^c8], while Uruguay institutionalised comprehensive sexuality education across all levels of its public education system, citing deteriorating adolescent health indicators and framing the change as a matter of equality and rights[^c9]. A draft African charter advanced by lawmakers from twenty countries rejects comprehensive sex education, which it claims sexualises children, asserts a binary view of gender, and declares that parental rights override a child's rights[^c10]. In Liberia, a coalition of rights defenders mounted a public defence of comprehensive sexuality education, arguing that national decisions should be guided by scientific evidence, public health realities, and human rights obligations rather than ideology[^c32], and highlighting the involvement of US-based organisations in the debate.
Other 2026 developments cut in several directions. In Japan, where national curriculum guidelines exclude the process of fertilisation and the course of pregnancy, 59.3% of surveyed teachers and parents — and 84.8% of parents — wanted the restriction abolished[^c11], and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations called for comprehensive sexuality education based on international standards. India's government told the Supreme Court it accepted a national expert committee's roadmap for comprehensive, age-appropriate sex education in schools and colleges, pending the court's approval[^c12], envisaging mandatory classes of 15 to 20 minutes twice a week from primary school[^c35]. Poland made health education compulsory but moved sexual health into a separate, non-compulsory module from which parents may withdraw their children[^c13]. Sri Lanka launched its first national guideline on age-appropriate sexuality education, together with a teacher guidance package for Grades 6 and 7[^c36], and deputies in Kazakhstan's parliament proposed mandatory sexuality and healthy-lifestyle modules for grades 7 to 9[^c37]. In the United States, the federal government cancelled $68 million in Teen Pregnancy Prevention grants mid-cycle while imposing conditions that require grantees to emphasise abstinence and marriage[^c14], and a New York audit found that more than a third of reviewed district curricula contained medically inaccurate or misleading information[^c15]. State legislation moved in the same restrictive direction: Alabama's Senate Bill 209, which took effect on 1 October 2026, establishes sexual risk avoidance as the standard for sex education in public K–12 schools and restricts instruction on abortion and the demonstration of contraceptives[^c30], and a 2025 peer-reviewed analysis of state laws found that only 19 states mandate that instruction be medically accurate — five of them only for specific topics[^c31]. Against this, national surveillance recorded a further fall in the United States teen birth rate to a record low of 11.7 per 1,000 females aged 15–19 in 2025[^c16]. The contest over what young people may learn about sexuality is therefore not converging but deepening.
Two European countries illustrate the polarisation within a single continent. Italy enacted Law 104 of 2026, which requires advance written parental consent for extracurricular and offer-expansion school activities addressing sexuality, with operational rules issued by Ministry of Education note No. 4712 in September 2026[^c17]; in one province the rule led to the suspension of a long-running child-abuse prevention programme. Romania took a different route to the same end: in October 2026 its education minister declined to support a subject named "Sex Education," arguing that the discussion had become excessively ideologised and that any attempt to introduce or retain the name produced disputes that could no longer be controlled scientifically or at curricular level[^c29], while proposing instead a politically and culturally neutral "Health Education" subject. France, by contrast, has made its EVARS programme compulsory since 2025, but a year after its introduction it remained contested, and organised opponents succeeded in shaping its content even as classroom delivery continued[^c18]. In Canada, Manitoba's first substantive sex-education overhaul in about 25 years retained a parental opt-out, drawing criticism from educators who argued that allowing families to remove children from a topic amounted to omission and censorship[^c19].
The regional picture remains uneven, including in settings where comprehensive sexuality education is nominally supported. A 2026 UNFPA regional evaluation covering its CSE programming from 2021 to 2024 across 15 Arab States found the work relevant and normatively aligned but constrained by uneven institutionalisation, limited coordination, and funding volatility, with no country operating a formal, age-banded stand-alone CSE curriculum[^c28]. In Africa, South Sudan's education ministry reported that comprehensive sexuality education had been integrated into the national curriculum only unevenly, with delivery varying from lunchtime sessions to content folded into science and social studies, and teacher training constrained by limited government resources, while Sarawak in Malaysia linked an 11.5 per cent fall in teenage pregnancy to its school-based sexuality education and advocacy programme. Continental provision has also expanded through UNESCO's Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future programme, funded by the governments of France, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden and covering 35 countries across sub-Saharan Africa[^c33].
Funding and awareness campaigns formed another axis of activity. In the United States, although Congress had appropriated $101 million for teen pregnancy prevention, about $100 million of it remained unspent as the 2026 fiscal year closed[^c20]. Internationally, national observances kept adolescent sexual and reproductive health on the public agenda: Mexico marked its National Day for the Prevention of Unplanned Adolescent Pregnancy[^c21], while Vietnam's World Contraception Day event at Hanoi Medical University promoted safe-sex knowledge and contraception to reduce unintended pregnancy and abortion among young people[^c22].