MEMBERS OF a teaching union in Scotland will continue to teach sex education to youngsters, despite misgivings over the content of some of the programmes and a call that sex lessons should be given by health professionals.

The National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers annual conference in Dundee heard yesterday that one anatomy lesson being taught in one school in primary one was unnecessary, inappropriate and questionable whether even parents of the children would have been able to identify certain aspects of the pictorial lesson.

Hazel Ralston of Glasgow said a video shown to pupils in one primary seven class of the birth of a baby caused some children distress, while in the first year of secondary, pupils were shown how to practise putting a condom on a piece of fruit.

She said some teachers were not comfortable delivering sex education lessons, and suggested health professionals such as school nurses could carry out that function.

She asked the conference to acknowledge many teachers were concerned about inappropriate content and that the union’s executive council should investigate delivery of sex education by health professionals.

Executive member Victor Topping disagreed, saying what was inappropriate to some would not be to others, and he suggested that the conference was being asked to accept that nurses could take over duties from teachers.

A modified version of the motion was accepted, striking out the word inappropriate and deleting reference to the duties being carried out by health professionals, although some delegates complained that what was left was pointless, since the motion now only asked the Executive to investigate the sex education programme.

On another issue, the union is to demand that the new Scottish Executive pump more cash into providing a better interpreter service for the thousands of eastern Europeans now coming to settle in Scotland.

Roy Robertson, the union’s treasurer, said it was not just young transient workers coming to Scotland to look for jobs, but families who wanted to settle here, and he asked conference to recognise there was a real problem that many had absolutely no English.

The materials available to schools, he said, were not suitable, and there did not appear to be any urgency on the part of the local authorities to tackle the problem.

“It is up to the Scottish Executive to address this,” he added.

The conference unanimously approved a call for the Executive to reduce class sizes to a maximum of 20 pupils.