GEORGE TOWN, Feb 22 ― Deputy Education Minister Teo Nie Ching told teachers not to treat physical and health education (PJPK) classes as unimportant or to replace it with English and mathematics classes.
She said physical and health education classes contain sex education to teach children about personal safety.
“I hope teachers will treat it as an important subject as the subject contains a lot of elements on safety, health and it also educates students on how to identify inappropriate touches,” she told reporters after visiting SJKT Subramaniye Barathee in Gelugor here.
She said sex education, in terms of educating students to prevent sexual abuse, was already incorporated in the government school syllabus from pre-school to secondary level.
“It wasn’t labelled as sex education due to the negative connotations of the term so it was incorporated into the physical and health education subject instead,” she said.
She said the subject contains other elements such as about safety and health so its focus was not only on sex education.
“In pre-school, children are taught to differentiate safe or unsafe touching, comfortable and uncomfortable touching,” she said.
She told parents not to treat sex education as taboo but a subject that needed to be taught to children to protect them against sexual predators.
“This morning, I read an article about Malaysia becoming a hotspot for sexual predators so we must teach our children to prevent them from being victimised,” she said.
She said there is a need to correct the misconception that sex education was teaching children about sex when the subject also teaches them how to protect themselves.
She said she held a meeting with various non-governmental organisations (NGO) and the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry to discuss a review of the syllabus.
“We are reviewing the PJPK curriculum now and we will be updating it accordingly,” she said.
