AN explicit television sex-education show featuring teenagers from an East Lancashire secondary school has drawn strong criticism from a former local vicar and a teachers’ union leader.

The Channel 4 programme features Belgian expert Goedele Liekens challenging pupils aged 15 and 16 to write a scene for a pornographic movie and instructing girls to “examine themselves with a handheld mirror”.

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The former Miss Belgium spent two weeks filming with a group of teenagers at Hollins Technology College, Accrington.

Rev Kevin Logan, whose former parish of Christchurch includes the school, said: “This programme is inappropriate. If I had been the headteacher or chairman of governors I would not have allowed it.”

Lancashire National Union of Teachers national executive member Simon Jones said: “I am in favour of having a robust, healthy sex-education curriculum but there is a line beyond which you should not go. This is way beyond it.”

Hyndburn council leader and county councillor Miles Parkinson said: “I have concerns about the suitability of this exercise.”

Channel 4’s Sex In Class promises to launch a new kind of sex education. In the programme, to be aired on Thursday at 9pm, boys are seen looking at images of female genitalia and are asked which they prefer.

Schoolboys also confess to how much online pornography they watch, describe some of the explicit videos and are asked to write their own porn stories.

Channel 4 has billed the show a “sex-education experiment” in which a class of 13 teenagers “tackle everything from hard-core porn to sexual pleasure, with homework including the girls exploring their vaginas and the boys shaving their pubic hair”.

According to the show statistics show that 83 per cent of young people in the UK have viewed porn by the age of 13 years old and that this is their main source of information when it comes to sex education.

For this reason many young people have and unrealistic view of sex and what is acceptable.

Ms Liekens believes that in the UK people need to urgently look at this issue and improve sex education to empower young people to make better choices and be able to discuss the subject openly with their parents and peers.

Ms Liekens, a psychologist and television presenter, was invited to run the course by headteacher Steve Campbell.

He said: “It was a big step to be part of this but this year we have dealt with teenage pregnancies and inappropriate texts, and the biggest influence on the young people is pornography. The route we are going down is appropriate and is what is needed in the school.”

Baxenden councillor and Hollins governor Kath Pratt said: “We have been told not to comment by the headteacher.”

A Lancashire County Council spokesman said: “The film was made at the wish of the headteacher.”

A Channel 4 spokesman said: “The school and parents were fully aware of the content and gave consent for the Year 11 pupils to take part.’