Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Private Schools: The Expansion Continues
Discussion, ideas, laughter, excitement… that’s what filled the room at our end-of-year workshop with the principals and educators of nine private schools in the Vakinankaratra region.
By the end of the 2025–2026 school year, these nine private schools had successfully rolled out the PJL program. It was a landmark year for us: the very first time we’d taken our program into private schools!
This first pilot year taught us a lot, and those lessons are now helping us go even further.
Join us as we look back on the workshop, take stock of the year, and share the key lessons guiding the next stage of the journey!
“We wanted the PJL program because of its impact on students and on the whole school”
The success of the program rests above all on the motivation and commitment of everyone involved, especially principals and teaching staff.
During the retrospective workshop, one activity invited participants to share what had motivated their school to take on the PJL program.
For starters, many teachers already knew the program. They’d seen it in action in nearby public schools and noticed how excited students were during classes.
Principals, for their part, had the chance to see the program firsthand when we invited them to sit in on CSE classes in public middle schools with our technical lead. That was followed by an orientation meeting to walk them through the program in detail.
Thanks to all this groundwork, most teachers embraced the program as soon as it was presented at the first staff meeting before the school year began.
They saw it as a chance to bring about positive change, both for adolescents’ development and for school life as a whole.
And that seems to already be coming true! At the workshop, school leaders and teachers reported real progress: a big boost in students’ self-confidence, more active participation in class, greater engagement with learning, a stronger sense of initiative and responsibility, and very positive changes in student behavior and relationships.
As the principal of a school in Manandona put it: “When I talked with some of our teachers, they told me students now speak up much more easily. The PJL program is having a real impact on students’ results and their personal growth.”
How did schools integrate the program?
Each school found different ways to make sure comprehensive sexuality education ran smoothly.
Nasolo Anjarasoa, partnerships coordinator at Projet Jeune Leader and in charge of this pilot year, explains: “One of the most striking things was that these schools treated CSE as a subject in its own right, just like any other.”
In most middle schools, CSE classes went straight onto the official timetable. Other schools chose to use free periods instead. One school in Ambohimandroso didn’t want to cut into either study time or free periods. After consulting the school's board, it added an extra hour of class each week for the grades involved.
Over the months, the program settled naturally into the day-to-day rhythm of each school and became a fully fledged part of school life.
Challenges and lessons learned for the next stage
One workshop activity shed light on the practical difficulties principals faced when bringing the program into their schools.
We especially valued this exercise because it brought out the successes as well as the challenges. This feedback is invaluable as we plan what comes next — including, in the 2026–2027 school year, expanding the program to private schools in the Itasy region. It’s a whole new challenge: this region has never had CSE teachers, in either public or private schools.
Luckily, the Vakinankaratra pilot taught us a lot. It helped us pin down a few key points that made our outreach and information sessions with new partners much clearer:
Costs: Implementing the program meant extra expenses. Principals found different ways to cover them. Some paid teachers a flat monthly fee rather than by the hour. In other cases, the principal (who also owned the school) taught the classes themselves. Others drew on the school’s general operating budget.
Content and time: Class lengths varied, and some topics were trickier to tackle with students. When that happened, CSE teachers reached out to the PJL team for support by phone, text, or other channels.
Space and noise: Some activities were very lively and sometimes disturbed neighboring classes. To keep things calm for everyone, quieter activities stayed in the classroom while the noisier ones moved out to the schoolyard.
Religious values: In some faith-based schools, certain sensitive topics made people hesitant. These schools adapted their approach by softening some of the wording (for example, avoiding frequent repetition of terms they deemed too explicit) while keeping the core of reproductive health education intact.
Energy: Running these classes took a lot of energy from teachers. With practice, they gradually found their footing and fine-tuned their preparation. The PJL technical team was always on hand to support, encourage, and advise them.
Everything we learned helped us kick off a stronger outreach and onboarding processes for private schools in Itasy.
“More than 80% of the private schools that came to the information session filled out an expression of interest form for the PJL program. I’m proud of that result,” shares Nasolo, our partnerships coordinator. “We learned a lot during last year’s pilot, and we worked hard to address the issues it raised. So even though we’re not yet well known in Itasy, we were able to communicate effectively, and it paid off.”
We can’t wait to kick off this new adventure this year! It will be a chance to learn even more and to see how CSE takes root in a region where it’s completely new.
