COMPREHENSIVE SEXUALITY EDUCATION TOWARDS TEENAGE PREGNANCY REDUCTION

     ABSTRACT 

Background: Comprehensive sexuality education is an education approach based intervention that helps provide adolescents in schools with the knowledge and skills on their sexuality. Sexuality education and teenage pregnancies are concepts deeply linked with each other. The importance of ensuring that young people are well informed about their sexuality cannot be over emphasized. This is necessary given the rate at which adolescents are dropping out of school due to teenage pregnancy, maternal mortalities due to incomplete and unsafe abortions and the age at which young people are becoming sexually active. Teenage pregnancy occurs in all societies, with considerable variation in magnitude and consequences. Adolescent pregnancy undermines girl’s human rights and compromises their opportunity to fully realize their social-economic developmental potential. Main Objective of the study: The purpose of this study was to examine how effective comprehensive sexuality education is towards teenage pregnancy reduction in selected secondary schools of Chingola. Methodology: The study employed a descriptive study in which the research participants were the pupils of Chingola high, Nchanga, kabundi and, sekela secondary school; these were selected using a purposive sampling technique. The sample size for the study was 32 female pupils and 4 teachers as key informants. Data was collected using an open ended questionnaire for teachers as key informants and focus group discussions for the pupils.

Results: The study results reviewed that in as much as there are a number of factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy, lack comprehensive sexuality education was the most contributing factor to teenage pregnancy. It was also found that majority of the respondents were not aware of what comprehensive sexuality education, that they were receiving it or that it was added to their school curriculum. Also, it was found that despite receiving training at workshops on comprehensive sexuality education, teachers are not delivering quality comprehensive education to the pupils in secondary schools. 

Conclusion: There was a revelation from this study that, despite the existence of comprehensive sexuality education in secondary schools and the contents having the potential to raise awareness on the health risk and reduce teenage pregnancy, comprehensive sexuality education is not being delivered to the pupils in secondary schools. The implication is that, teenagers are misguided by the low levels of information they are getting from school and the inaccurate information they are getting from their peers. The information obtained by pupils is not enough to reduce or prevent teenage pregnancy.