This academic year our school introduced sex education into advisory classes for both middle and high school.

That may not sound too surprising but within international schools a focus on sex education is often overlooked due to the various cultural issues it can create.

Given our school’s strong focus this year on developing a comprehensive advisory curriculum, incorporating sex education lessons felt like a natural fit - yet we also had to remain attentive to cultural differences. Here’s how we did it.

Introducing sex education in an international school

1. Begin with an existing curriculum

Since we are an International Baccalaureate school, we don’t have a specific textbook that covers personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education, but this gave us the freedom to discuss as a leadership team what we believed would be best for our students.

After looking at several different curricula, we settled on Canada’s Alberta Health Services Curriculum, which covers both socio-emotional and biological aspects of sex education and so gave us a great base to build on.

Not only this but the curriculum also follows across grades 6-12 so we can ensure consistency throughout the school and the following year’s lesson would build on what the students covered last year.

2. Divide up classes

Once we had decided on the curriculum we gave teachers freedom to collaborate freely to create their lesson plans (within boundaries), with teachers across the grades working in the same room so cross-collaboration could exist.

Our students were separated by grade then gender, and teachers were assigned (if possible) with their homeroom.

Alternatively, teachers who had regular teaching contact with a particular grade and were confident teaching sex education were also assigned a class.

From then on, male and female teachers were placed in their pairs - i.e., Grade 7, Grade 8, etc - and worked to create lessons so both male and female students were taught the same content.

Once lesson plans were completed, they were forwarded to pastoral in advance and were given a final look over to ensure that nothing taboo was touched on (see below.

After a brief review the lessons were either given the go-ahead or recommendations were put forward for what needed to be adjusted.

3. Understand your context

Despite a school being international, we must abide with local laws and customs. Our school is based in China, a conservative culture, with much of our student cohort coming from socially conservative countries.

As a result, we needed to be mindful of what we taught and adapt lesson content as required.

For example, within the curriculum we chose were aspects relating to the LGBT community, which we omitted. This may not be as inclusive as some may like, but it is essential that one understands the context.

However, if any student mentioned something along the lines of gay or lesbian relationships, we would acknowledge that these relationships exist. But it was advised that we gradually steer the discussion and remain on topic with the planned content of the lesson.

4. Let parents know in advance

Linked to this, parents have a right to withdraw their children from sex education lessons if they want.

As such, we let the parents know via school communications two weeks in advance of the sex education classes happening and explained the lesson for their children’s classes.

We didn’t have requests to remove children from class, but ensuring that parents have this right each yeah is key to avoid any unnecessary issues.

5. Debrief

Since this was our first time teaching a designated sex education curriculum in the school, it was essential that we did a debrief after the lessons to gauge what went well and would be repeated next year.

We also took this opportunity to share how we could improve and how future adaptations could be made.

Overall, teachers were happy teaching it and the lessons went well, but there were suggestions put forward for translated vocabulary sheets to be handed out at the beginning of class and teen health webpages from relevant countries to be shared with students at the end of the lesson.

The way forward

Teaching sex education in an international context can often be very tricky and it requires a lot of sensibility, adaptability and cultural understanding.

However, with good planning and collaboration between staff, our first attempt was successful and staff learnt a lot.

Through this teamwork approach we are continuing to lay the groundwork for a more informed advisory curriculum that helps to address our students’ developmental needs.

Gary Wood works as a pastoral coordinator at an international school in Wuxi, China

You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on iOS and on Android