'Teachers have role to protect pupils’

Press, 15 June 1978, Page 11

'Teachers have role to protect pupils’

PA Wellington Teachers had a responsibility to ensure their pupils did not get pregnant, said the president of the Student Teachers’ Association (Mr T. Mallard). “Education boards should recognise that some children in primary and intermediate schools are sexually active,” he said. The Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion Act passed last year allows contraceptives to be sold or given to children under 16 in schools under certain conditions. But the Education Board’s Association is reported to be preparing a bylaw to prohibit this in primart’ and intermediate schools. Teachers’ responsibility to ensure that their pupils did

not get pregnant should include providing, after consultation with parents, realistic courses in human development and relationships, Mr Mallard said. It should also include referral to approved persons for contraceptive advice and, if necessary, supply of contraceptives. “The Wellington Education Board has indicated that it will forbid this in an effort to clarify the situation for teachers and to remove the risk of teachers getting in trouble with the law,” Mr Mallard said. “In doing so it leaves at risk a group of children who will not get contraceptives any other way, whose parents may not be interested enough to take their children to a doctor.”