Toward an Understanding of Optimal Grade for Starting Sexuality Education Programme for In-School Children and Adolescents: Insights from Ghana

Providing young people and children with age and developmentally appropriate comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is important for young people in making informed decisions. There are presently few studies documenting the relationship between school grade of learning CSE and curriculum coverage. We studied this relationship using a 2015 national survey conducted in three regions of Ghana—Greater Accra, Brong Ahafo, and Northern. A sample of 2,990 adolescents in Senior High School (SHS) 2 and 3 were drawn from 82 randomly sampled secondary schools. Logistic regression was used to assess full coverage of five CSE modules—sexual and reproductive physiology, HIV/STI prevention, contraception and pregnancy prevention, gender and sexual and reproductive health, and values and interpersonal skills and classes/grades students first started learning sexuality. The results show that students were more likely to learn all modules on sexual and reproductive physiology while values and interpersonal skills were the least covered topic. Students who learned sexuality topics before Primary 6 had better chances of better content coverage on five themes. Knowledge, and perhaps behavioral outcomes on sexual and reproductive health could be better enhanced with the early introduction of CSE topics. © 2021 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.