St Kevin’s survey asks boys about sex, drugs

St Kevin’s is under fire for a “blunt and confronting” survey that asked students if “men are always ready for sex” and whether they used condoms.

St Kevin’s College has come under fire for a school-wide survey asking boys about their sex life.

St kevin’s College has pulled a school-wide survey that asked students if “men are always ready for sex”, and quizzed older boys about whether they used condoms and “how often do you have sex”.

The Catholic students were asked about masculinity, homosexuality, drinking and drug-taking in a survey run by the school’s governing body, Edmund Rice Education Australia.

Principal Deborah Barker wrote to parents on Wednesday to say the school would not proceed with the research project.

The survey asked questions about the pressure young males feel to be a “real man”, whether they would be happy having a gay friend, and how often they took drugs, drank and vaped.

Boys were asked to comment on the following: “Other people think I am good looking”, “I do not like my parents very much”, “Being gay makes a guy seem like less of a man” and “A guy should use violence to get respect if necessary”.

The students were asked how often they had physically “hurt someone on purpose” and whether they had “made sexual comments to a woman or girl you didn’t know?”

Such programs are based on research that shows males who hold traditional views about masculinity are more than 20 times more likely to be violent and homophobic.

The survey was being run in eight other Edmund Rice Education Australia schools.

But some parents and students at St Kevin’s objected to the tone and content of the questions. “It was blunt and confronting and made the boys uncomfortable,” one parent told the Herald Sun.

“The school had the best of intentions but they botched it. “The boys thought the question on being gay suggested that being gay was wrong and they worried about what the school would do with the findings about drugs,” he said. “The older boys thought the school was trying to set them up to reveal personal stuff that would trigger a school-wide intervention about sex and drugs.”

Ms Barker said the school had “received feedback from the boys, parents, carers and teachers raising concerns about some of the survey’s content”.

“The anonymous data collected from St Kevin’s students will be deleted,” she said. Ms Barker said the school was “focused on integrating a range of initiatives into the curriculum to develop our boys, including their wellbeing and how they develop respectful relationships, particularly with women”.

The decision comes as a recent St Kevin’s cultural review found evidence of a “toxic” and “misogynistic” culture.