The effectiveness of school - based sex education : What do rigorous evaluations in

little robust research evidence on the effectiveness of school-based sex education. Many in health promotion argued that well designed, timely sex education could substantially reduce sexual risk taking, but others argued that if delivered too early it promotes greater sexual activity. A third, more sociological, perspective was that sex education cannot override the many other personal and social influences on sexual behaviour. In the last decade four large scale evaluations of three school-based sex education programmes in Britain have been published in academic journals. Considered together they should largely resolve these conflicting claims. This article briefly describes each of these programmes and how they were evaluated. It then summarises the main evaluation findings, in terms of implementation and outcomes, and discusses their implications for future sexual health promotion.