Federal government reinstates sex education to the ‘School Health Program’

Sex education starts at home. Right? Not always, in fact, quite the contrary, unfortunately, for some families. This is where the visceral importance of the school comes in and its role in educating and forming citizens who are aware, from an early age, of their fundamental rights.

A step forward in this direction was taken by the partnership signed between the Ministries of Education and Health, when they announced, last Wednesday (26), the re-inclusion of the teaching of sex education in the 'Programa Saúde na Escola' (PSE), which will now include central themes such as violence and accidents; promotion of a culture of peace and human rights; sexual and reproductive health, as well as prevention of HIV (AIDS) and STD (sexually transmitted diseases).

With the initiative, which should receive a contribution of R$ 90.3 million, the government expects to reach 25 million students in the public school system in the country, through the participation of 99% of the municipalities Brazilians.

Until then, the federal program was limited to dealing with a few specific topics, such as healthy eating, obesity prevention and promotion of physical activity, which will be maintained by the Executive, which intends to add the discipline of health to the curriculum mental.

According to the new guideline, federal transfers to municipalities will be conditioned to the needs of basic education students in each location. In this way, they will be able to receive R$ 1 thousand more for each group of 1 to 800 students from public and partner day care centers, rural schools that have students submitted to socio-educational measures or those that present, at least, 50% of the enrolled students, who are from beneficiary families of the 'Bolsa Family'.

Starting next year, however, such transfers will be conditioned to the percentage of schools that have already promoted PSE actions in the municipality, as well as the percentage of those educational institutions that included the actions prioritized in the program, in the two-year period 2023/2024.

If, on the contrary, the actions of the Health Program at school are not registered, the municipality will not be entitled to the planned investments, although it will continue to be part of the federal project,

Initiated in 2007, the PSE consists of an inter-ministerial partnership that includes the provision of teams and resources for the acquisition of materials, to be distributed to municipalities that adhere to the program.