Dr. Debbie Ging:

I think Ms McGowan answered Deputy Martin's question. I am not leading the research. My colleague, Dr. Mel Duffy, in the school of nursing, is leading it. It brings up a really important question about research. We are seeing that much of the research on delivery of the programme is piecemeal and out of date. Having bits and pieces of research, regardless of their quality or importance, is not sufficiently comprehensive. A starting point would be to commission national level, large-scale research that addresses young people's perceptions and experiences of RSE, their needs, where they are and what they are doing sexually, and what their perceptions of the programme are.

Otherwise I do not think we are ever going to get to what is age appropriate or what is actually going on. How do we start with a student-led programme unless we actually know what is happening on some sort of reliable, representative scale? That is probably a better starting point than trying to join up a lot of different pieces of research. It is small funding; it is very good research but the funding and therefore the scale is not adequate.

In response to Deputy Funchion's question as to what teachers should do, one of the recommendations made by the Welsh RSE review was to make it mandatory to appoint an RSE lead in every school in the country. That recommendation has now been adopted. If there are external bodies, that person can act as a liaison with them and he or she is also ultimately responsible for the ethos within the school. That would be a core development.