Since 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that “comprehensive” sex education plays a central role in preparing young people for a “safe, productive, fulfilling life in a world where HIV and AIDS, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unintended pregnancies, gender-based violence (GBV) and gender inequality still pose serious risks to their well-being.”
While some may take such education for granted, even today sex and relationship education is not part of the school curriculum throughout Europe. Several countries have included sex education and/or emotional and relational education in schools, but there is still a lot of resistance.
The wave of conservatism sweeping the continent as well as the United States, is impacting the ability of governments to implement programmes, and more broadly the health of the public at large.
France: sexual and emotional education, at school and beyond
Since 2001 (Law 2001-588), sex education has been compulsory in France and – supposedly – must be taught in primary and secondary schools with at least three lessons per year, throughout the country, in both public and private schools.
However, the reality is somewhat different. Le Monde writes: ”According to an official report from 2021, ‘less than 15 percent of students benefit from three [sex education] lessons during the school year in primary or secondary school (less than 20 percent in middle school, respectively).” This failure to implement the law led to a complaint against the state in 2023 by three associations (Planning familial, SOS Homophobie and Sidaction).
Since the current school year (2025-26), affective, relational and sexual education (Education à la vie affective et relationnelle et à la sexualité, EVARS) has become an integral part of the French school curriculum.
Despite shortcomings, the period between 2001 and 2025 has allowed for the creation of spaces for discussion and best practices. An interesting case in this regard is that of Didier Valentin/Drkpote, who has been working as an educator in emotional and sexual education in middle schools, high schools and vocational schools for about twenty years.
A still from Classe libre, by Clara Elalouf.
Valentin, whose career began with HIV prevention, explains that while his work was initially based on “hygienist” prevention (practical prevention against sexually transmitted diseases), today it focuses mainly on “gender issues, sexist and sexual violence, consent and relationships with others…”
Valentin works mainly with young people in middle and high schools and discusses “gender identity, gender roles and how relationships of domination are established.” His work is the subject of a documentary by Clara Elalouf (Classe libre) and he is the author of two books, Génération Q : Chroniques (Ed. La Ville brûle, 2018, a collection of his articles for the feminist newspaper Causette) and Pubère la vie : À l’école des genres (Ed. du Détour, 2023).
Valentin’s “lessons” also have a very practical side: in addition to distributing condoms, he shows the anatomy, passes around a silicone vulva among the students, and talks about contraception, including male contraception.
A still from Classe libre, by Clara Elalouf.
“#MeToo”, Valentin says, “was also a revolution in education, but not for teenagers”. Young people remained on the sidelines of Twitter (now X), and it was the adults who changed: “If the topics of consent and sexual violence were part of our education before, after #MeToo they became central.”
It is important, Valentin continues, to show his young students that “gender roles begin very, very early,” and how “easy” it is for relationships of domination to take root in emotional life, followed by sexual and married life.
Didier Valentin’s profession remains essentially a female job: “There aren’t many of us cis-heterosexual men doing this job,” he says, recalling that it’s “a care profession.”
Ann-Laure Bourgeois, teacher and journalist, founder of Les ateliers badass and author of the parenting guide Parents informés, enfants protégés, is also a trainer and consultant on children’s sexual health. Bourgeois explains to me the importance of the role of parents. “Education about intimacy begins at home: parents must also learn that a child can say no” (to being touched or photographed, for example). “The culture of consent begins at home,” she adds.
If adults respect a child’s physical boundaries, Bourgeois explains, the child “will feel empowered to set their own boundaries at school or in social settings.” In this way, we can raise adults who are “more tolerant, happier and better informed, and violence can be reduced.”
What is happening in Europe?
While sex education is not a “European competence” – Article 6 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) establishes that the EU has supporting competences in the areas of education and health policy, which remain the responsibility of the member states – the EU does align itself with international recommendations.
There can often be radical differences between member states. In Hungary, Poland and Bulgaria, for example, discussions about gender identity and LGBT+ rights are becoming taboo or illegal, in a situation comparable to that in Russia.
‘If the topics of consent and sexual violence were part of our education before, after #MeToo they became central’ – Didier Valentin
In some countries, such as Sweden and Finland, sex education is part of compulsory education, integrated into subjects such as health education and biology. Germany offers a comprehensive sex education programme from primary school through to secondary school, covering biology, but also consent, relationships, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Such education is also compulsory in Belgium, but the way it is implemented varies between Flanders and Wallonia. Austria offers sex education in schools, which is part of the curriculum from primary school onwards. As Austrian daily Der Standard explains: “Sex education is now understood as a form of school education that begins in early childhood, in a way that is appropriate to the age of the children, and continues into adulthood”, and sexuality is understood as “the positive potential inherent in human beings.”
A notable absentee
In Italy, sex education is still a mirage: “In the wake of the Cecchettin case,” writes Claudia Torrisi in Internazionale, Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara presented a plan for schools entitled ‘Relationship education.’ It is an optional, extracurricular course that has been deemed insufficient by organisations that have been dealing with the issue for years. The 500,000 euro initially allocated for sex and emotional education in schools was ultimately earmarked for training teachers on infertility prevention. Since the first attempt in 1975, sixteen proposals for sex education in schools have been rejected.”
The situation regarding sex education in Lithuanian schools is very uneven and often fragmented, as Delfi explains. Although sex education lessons are part of the curriculum in many schools, they rarely take place, and when they do, it is often without any enthusiasm.
In Romania, sex education continues to be taboo, HotNews explains. A subject called “health education” was recently introduced, which can be taught during biology lessons. Although the Education Act stipulates that health education is a compulsory subject in pre-school education, in 2022 the Romanian Parliament introduced the requirement for parental consent for students in Year 8 and above, after decades of heated debate over the very term “sex education.”
Similarly, in Bulgaria, sex education is not a separate subject. Instead, it is integrated into the teaching of “Biology and Health Education,” from the third year to the fifth year of secondary school.
In Greece, sex education is taught as part of the subject “Well-being”, which also includes “Environment”, “Social Awareness and Responsibility” and “Creativity and Innovation.” However, as teachers are free to choose which of these topics to cover and how much time to devote to them, sex education is often sidelined and replaced by less “sensitive” topics, explains Efsyn.
In Poland, for a long time, the only subject was “Family Life Education.” With the start of the 2025-26 school year, a new non-compulsory subject called “Health Education” has been introduced. This subject is also supposed to cover sexual health, which is a thorn in the side of the Law and Justice Party (PiS).
Members of the party have argued that the programme “contains harmful elements, including the separation of sexuality from love, marriage and family, the promotion of abortion as a health service and the spread of gender ideology.” The Catholic Church, which plays a particularly influential role in Poland, has also denounced the lessons as “anti-family” and “gender-destabilising,” claiming that they would “morally corrupt children.”
🤝 This article was produced as part of the PULSE project, a European initiative supporting cross-border journalistic collaboration. Contributors include Lisa Nimmervoll (Der Standard, Austria), Ieva Kniukštienė (Delfi, Lithuania), Ștefania Gheorghe (HotNews, Romania), Marina Kelava (H-alter, Croatia), Desislava Koleva (Mediapool, Bulgaria) and Giota Tessi (Efsyn, Greece).
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