Partners News No 6 - January 2001
By Dave Percival
Featured Partner - Students Exploring Marriage
Recent changes in the national curriculum have put a responsibility on secondary schools to include a consideration of the value of marriage in their sex and relationship education policy. Some 90% of year 12 students, when questioned, have aspirations to start a family one day and see that as happening within the context of a stable long term relationship. Yet the marriage rate is falling and the divorce rate rising. Something is happening between the expectation at this age and the fulfilment of those expectations. Giving students the opportunity to explore issues around marriage before they have entered a long term serious relationship is one way to respond to this situation.
Students Exploring Marriage (SEM) offers students the opportunity to explore their aspirations to marriage further, through a 12 week workshop and a one day conference. Those volunteering for the workshop are facilitated to develop a research project looking at the relevance of the traditional form of marriage in today’s society, ie, Christian marriage. Three couples who consider themselves to be in a Christian marriage visit the workshop three times each to be interviewed by the students. At the end of the workshop the students present their findings often in the form of an essay, which is published on the SEM website. The work they do is also valuable as evidence in the new Key Skills qualifications, which now play a role in both job and university applications.
The work is co-ordinated nationally but functions through a local steering group of volunteers, who care about marriage and about young people and their future. SEM is also working with Care for Education to produce further resources for use in schools.