UNESCO commissioned a study to explore how national CSE programmes affect learners’ relationships in five countries: Argentina, Armenia, Lao PDR, Namibia and Nigeria. This study had two objectives:
- To explore learner- and school-level outcomes related to the knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and skills that may contribute to healthy interpersonal relationships.
- To document the national and school-level contexts, including the programmatic inputs and mechanisms that shape the implementation of CSE, and their implications for achieving outcomes.
The study focused on three categories of relationships important to adolescent learners: relationships with parents and caregivers; relationships with peers and friends; and romantic relationships. It used a mixed-methods approach, with three main data collection activities. The study also included a desk review of existing reports and curricular documents.
As a first step, the research team mapped the available national curricular documents in the countries against the key relationships topics and learning objectives for ages 9 to 12 and 12 to 15 in the International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education (ITGSE). All five country curricula included cross-cutting components of gender, social norms, characteristics of healthy relationships and references to three categories of relationships to be studied (relationships with parents, peers and friends, and romantic relationships). Materials varied in terms of the breadth and depth of coverage, and the commonalities formed the basis for the study tools. Every effort was taken to base the development of the tools on the evidence-based ITGSE and the content of countries’ own curricular documents.
Review of available curricular documents found a range of topics and types of content for the relationship categories used for this study and these files provide a full mapping of relationships content for each of the five countries.