By SHARON LING

THE topic of sex education in schools has cropped up again.

This time, it was at a seminar about teaching children personal safety.

Keynote speaker Datuk Dr Chiam Heng Keng said research had shown that more Malaysian teenagers were now sexually active.

'We did a study some time ago and the number of students actively involved in sex was quite high - about 30-odd per cent. This figure also includes girls who were raped on dates, so it's not all consensual,' she said.

She said the study also found that most of the sexual activity took place at home rather than outside.

'This is where parents must be very careful. When their children bring friends home to study, parents should not allow them to go and study in their room,' she said.

And Sarwak Assistant Minister in the CM's Department Fatimah Abdullah stressed the importance of sex education with regards to personal safety.

'If we want to achieve the objective of increasing awareness and personal safety, more has to be done,' she told reporters after opening the seminar on 'Training Our Children on Personal Safety' at the Islamic Information Centre in Kuching Saturday.

Her point is that sex education is currently not taught on its own, with only parts of it included in other subjects like biology or physical education.

'To me this is not sufficient,' she said.

However, she said pragmatic measures were needed to teach schoolchildren about sex and personal safety as it would be difficult to introduce a new subject into the already-crowded school syllabus.

'At the end of the day, our children have to learn how to keep safe,' she said.