Jane Lewis and Trudie Knijn A Comparison

he difference between teenage pregnancy rates in the UK and The Netherlands is well-known. During the last quarter of the twentieth century, the birth rate per 1000 girls aged 15-19 in England and Wales remained remarkably stable at just above or below 40, while that for Dutch girls of the same age halved from an already low 8.4 to 4.1. The fact that sex education is much less controversial in The Netherlands, particularly at the political level, and that Dutch society is more open when it comes to issues about sex is also well known (e.g. Jones et al., 1986; Ketting, 1994; Braeken, 1994), although English-speaking observers have tended to mistake openness for permissiveness (e.g. Hardy and Zabin, 1991; Dryfoos, 1990). Formal sex education in schools has not, however, been strongly developed in The Netherlands until relatively recently (Jones et al., 1986; Scott et al., 1995). Furthermore, in terms of its structure, Dutch sex education is similar to its English counterpart, with a division between biology and personal and social education (PSE), which is called ‘care’ in The Netherlands. However, while only biology is compulsory in England and Wales, both subjects are compulsory with nationally set ‘attainment targets’ in The Netherlands. A leading Dutch sex educator from the Rutgers Stichting reported that materials developed by Rutgers’ British counterpart, the Family Planning Association (FPA) tended to be closer in terms of their approach than those of other Western European countries.1 However, the Rutgers materials are integrated into the Dutch curriculum in a way that the FPA materials are not. Sex education in schools is only one of many factors influencing teenage pregnancy rates (SEU, 1999), but the fact that there are significant similarities as well as differences between two countries with very different teenage birth rates makes it an interesting point of comparison. Even if the structure and some of the content of Dutch sex education is similar to the English, the subject may still be approached very differently.