Comprehensive Sexuality Education

The Kingdom of Tonga is the only constitutional monarchy in the Pacific, comprised of 171 islands, of which 40 are inhabited. Tonga has four main island groups, with the majority of the population residing in Tongatapu. Tonga has a population of approximately 110,00 people, with more than half of the population being under the age of 25. 

Tonga has one of the higher maternal mortality rates in the Pacific, and pregnancies among adolescents have increased in recent years. There are challenges for the integration of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) into formal education because of cultural taboos surrounding sexuality and the shame associated with the discussion of sex and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and adolescent pregnancy. These taboos discourage communication about sex in families, schools and churches. 

At present there are no curricula that include comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in schools in Tonga.

The Education Act 2013 (revised in 2020) mandates that a curriculum development unit be established to create policies, criteria, and standards for curricula and assessment. However, the law does not require health and sexuality education to be developed or included in the curriculum. 

The Tonga Ministry of Education and Training Corporate Plan 2019/2020 -2021/2022 includes within its outputs on learning and teaching for secondary schools the inclusion of ‘global citizenship education and education for sustainable development’. This includes life-skills training and counselling, as well as improved professional development in secondary schools, including teaching students about life choices and skills and counselling on drug use and abuse.  

The Tonga Strategic Development Framework 2015-2025 covers 10 years of national development priorities. The strategy includes a national outcome for a more inclusive, sustainable, dynamic and knowledge-based economy and more inclusive, sustainable and empowering human development, as well as gender equality. Policy outcome 1 refers to the ‘health and wellbeing of the youth’s body, mind and soul’. Health programmes and services for youth (key action 1.1.3) are mainstreamed into programmes covering basic health, education, social, moral (religious), adolescent sexual and reproductive health, and mental and psychosocial issues. 

Tonga does not currently have a current national sexual and reproductive health (SRH) strategy. The country’s most recent SRH strategic plan is the National Integrated Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategic Plan 2014-2018, which, although expired, includes measurement and evaluation frameworks, implementation plans, and budgets allocated to its activities.  

The National Integrated Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategic Plan 2014-2018 aims for all the youth of Tonga to practise a healthy lifestyle through accessing high quality health education, life-skills training and youth-friendly health services. 

The Tonga Education Policy Framework (2004 – 2019) does not include CSE as an objective.

The current curricula do not include family life education. The Ministry of Education and Training Corporate Plan 2019/2020 -2021/2022 mentions the need to include life-skills training and counselling for secondary schools.  

According to the United Nations Population Fund, University of Melbourne on Sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence in Tonga: A review of policy and legislation (2022) report, ‘while CSE is not addressed in legislation, the Tonga National Integrated Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategic Plan 2014-2018 refers to the need to offer school-based and teacher-facilitated information for different age groups, with objective 2.9 (p.42) being that “by 2018, young people are empowered with age and sex appropriate life skills-based education and information”.’ The indicator for this objective is the proportion of targeted schools that have rolled out family life education. Activities against this objective include: “revising the Family Life Education (FLE) curriculum; providing ongoing capacity building for FLE teachers; developing an implementation plan to scale-up FLE to all schools; incorporating FLE into pre-service teacher education in teacher training institutions; and developing and providing teaching/learning resource materials. However, the curriculum was not cited during this review and no detail was found in relation to its content. It is unclear to what degree this objective has been achieved.

There are no curricula that address CSE in schools in Tonga.

Access to school-based health services, including SRH: According to the Health Services Act as revised in 2020, the minister may specify the number and types of sanitary facilities to be provided in schools and other educational establishments.  

The Tonga National Integrated Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategic Plan 2014-2018 (through focus area 2c: adolescent SRH, and the related strategy area 1 (the development of a formal youth-friendly adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) education programme) includes the offering of school-based and teacher-facilitated information for different age groups, including younger adolescents and the most at-risk young people.