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The Education Department also sponsors sex education courses for teachers conducted by the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong. 342 secondary school teachers and 156 primary school teachers were trained through these courses in the last three school years.

The Education Department and the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong have scheduled 9 sex education courses this school year to train an additional 285 secondary and 200 primary school teachers respectively. More courses will be conducted as necessary.

In addition, a variety of seminars and workshops on specific sex education topics such as life skills training and AIDS are provided from time to time. In the past three school years, a total of 1,322 teachers attended these seminars and workshops.

(b)

The Education Department has been actively promoting sex education in schools by:

integrating sex education elements in secondary school subject syllabuses such as Social Studies, Liberal Studies, Religious/Ethical Education, Biology, Human Biology, Integrated Science and Home Economics; and primary school subjects such as General Studies, Health Education and Social Studies;

advising and promoting sex education during school visits by subject inspectors;

providing teaching packages on topics such as AIDS and Sex and Mass Media, and Education Television programmes on sex education to schools;

providing advisory and supporting services to sex education teachers through the two Sex Education Resource Centres; and

encouraging schools to avail themselves of leaflets, booklets and audio-visual materials on sex education produced by the Central Health Education Unit of the Department of Health.

In addition to the above measures, a working group has been set up under the Curriculum Development Institute in the Education Department comprising medical doctors, social workers, school heads and teachers, and a representative from the Home School Co-operation Committee. The working group will formulate a new set of sex education guidelines for schools and recommend measures to further promote sex education in schools. The new guidelines and other recommendations of the working group will be released for consultation in March 1997.

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