Sir, Mandatory sex lessons for every 15-year-old (report , Nov 6) is an encroachment on the personal liberties of parents. It is risible to suggest that under-age single mothers who have experienced sex need any lessons whatsoever in such matters. Schools would do better to concentrate on imparting the “three Rs”, on which knowledge of other subjects can be built. Allied to a return of proper school discipline, this would give disaffected youth a sense of self-worth and achievement which at present they seem able to find only in the production of illegitimate offspring that they can neither support nor nurture. It’s time that the woolly liberal attitudes from which the present dysfunctional education structure has arisen, and which blurs the distinction between right and wrong, was consigned to the scrapheap.

Laurence Factor
Stanmore, Middlesex

Sir, Let us hope that the latest trend in sex tuition is a temporary blip until the children are parents and can pass on the relevant information. In my younger days I was one of a team giving factual sex education to parents and children together at their own request. This proved very successful and helped to close the generation gap. Only the parents and close adults really know when is the best time to impart this information. To suggest that 15 is a suitable age when children are in the midst of hormone turbulence is quite wrong. Giving preparatory human development information to children aged 8 or 9 would be far more sensible. As one of the boys in such classes was overheard saying to another: “I didn’t know you were so wonderful inside. I thought you were just someone to bash up.”

Frances Hancock
Lymm, Cheshire

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