Relationships and Sex Education

Two case studies

St Peter's - A Church of England Aided School

One of our most committed clients and collaborators is a Church of England Aided School. In these turbulent times with pressure on budgets and 'non-academic subjects' we were interested to learn why Apause continues to make such an important contribution to their PSHE provision.

Read the case study here.

Apause evaluated for Healthy Schools by Department of Health

Dawlish Community College – Devon

Just before the 2010 election the then Department of Health carried out a case study of a local comprehensive school running Apause, citing it as a model of good practice in SRE and contributing to the Healthy Schools agenda.

Read the original case study as carried out by Edcoms here.

Dawlish CC case study as published by Department for Education

Read the case study as it appears on the Department for Education website under HEALTHY SCHOOLS - Examples of Evidence Informed Practice page 49 here.

Discussion

Whilst we are proud to be acknowledged by the Department for Education, the case study as it appears on the website does not completely reflect what was happening in Dawlish Community College at the time of the investigation (2010). The published study prefers to quote elements from the NFER 2004 evaluation and hilight some of the misleading concerns about price. The school, in common with seven other schools in Devon, considered it good enough value to pay for the programme even after all local funding was cut, and it was using the much lower cost ApauseToo version that is described on this website by the Head of PSHE from Dawlish here.

The DfE Healthy Schools case study did not mention that Apause is unique in impacting on young people's ability to manage their relationships more effectively, despite the fact that evidence supporting this assertion was published in the NFER 2004 Evaluation . Data from 2003 (NFER) showed that Apause students were less likely than others to be sexually active and that features of Apause (teaching of assertiveness techniques and discussions about contraception) were linked with better use of contraception both at first and most recent intercourse. The same positive NFER findings were replicated in our evaluation of Apause in Dawlish CC in the data gathered in 2009/10.

To find out more about Apause and young people's sexual health visit our 'About Us' page. here.