A culture of silence and fear around sex education in New Zealand is leaving young people without the skills to deal with issues such as unprotected sex and peer pressure.
Teachers and parents need to accept adolescents as sexual agents and rid themselves of the perception that by talking comprehensively about sex they are promoting it, Dunedin Family Planning health promoter Gayna McConnell believes.
A "huge knowledge-practice gap" affected young people's behaviour, largely because of the silence around issues such as sexual pressures, negotiating limits and pleasure, she said.
"It's amazing how little they know around how to communicate with partners about delaying, pacing and how to ensure a safe positive experience if they choose to engage in sexual activity."
Teachers often feared discussing the intimacies of sex with pupils because of the myth that to do so would encourage sexual activity.
Parents were also often silent on this topic, but the best place for conversations about morals and values in relation to sex and sexual issues was the home, she said.
The strong gender stereotypes which still existed for adolescents put pressure on males to have sex and females to be sexually passive.
The lack of a strong voice combined with our alcohol culture meant the sexual health of a lot of our young people was "a mess".
Ms McConnell said a 2008 youth survey revealed 40% of 15-year-olds were sexually active and, according to the majority of pupils she had talked to, unplanned sex at parties was perceived as common.
European cultures, which were more trusting and accepting of young people as sexual beings and provided comprehensive sex education from around the age of 11-12, created sexually more healthy young people, she said.
"These other cultures show us clearly that trusting young people with all the information empowers them rather than promotes sexual activity.
"The silence and the fear around young people's sexual agency is leaving a lot of our youth disempowered and vulnerable to negative sexual experience."
Dunedin South general practitioner Dr Jill McIlraith, the clinical leader at the Dunedin Sexual Health Clinic, said 70% of visitors to the clinic were under the age of 25.
The majority of cases involved chlamydia, but genital warts and herpes were also common.
"The whole of New Zealand is experiencing an increase in STIs - Dunedin is no different."
She believed society as a whole was to blame because of the hypocrisy of adults towards sex and the country's drinking culture.
In order to combat these issues, Ms McConnell created a concept called the "sexual road", a teaching device which explored emerging sexuality and sexual progression in young people as a developmental stage in their lives.
She had approached Dunedin schools with the "student-driven" programme in the hope of making the sexual education young people received "more realistic and relevant".
