The Contextualisation of Guidelines on Sex Education in School: Moving Towards a Competent Sex Education in Hong Kong

Abstract

Despite the introduction of the Guidelines on Sex Education in Schools (the Guidelines) as early as in 1997, the implementation of sex education across schools in Hong Kong remained ineffective and even stagnant in the last two decades. Although the government argues that the Guidelines are only for reference, many schools rely on it heavily when designing their own sex education curriculum. Nonetheless, the contextualization of the Guidelines reveals a series of tensions and challenges associated with the school-based development of sex education in Hong Kong. Therefore, with the employment of qualitative documentary analysis, this article aims to contribute to the field by undergoing a critical analysis of the Guidelines as well as other publications related to sex education in Hong Kong and around the world, followed by elaborating on how to fully implement it in a way that could address the challenges arisen from the latest digital media technology, lack of holistic and coherent curriculum planning and design, the paternalistic and top-down learning and teaching approach, insufficient interdisciplinary collaboration, poor or lack of curriculum renewal and evaluation design, and inadequate professional development of teachers. After all, the successful delivery of a comprehensive and competent sex education requires coherent and systematic planning and structuring from the bottom-up, middle-out, and top-down dimensions within a school, which refers to classroom students, frontline teachers, and school curriculum.