The lives of teenagers are a battleground for sexual pressures and political agendas. Mike Farrington interviewed Romance Academy, who are raising up a new voice.

'Some of the guys from the BBC were crying'

The series was made by TV company IWC, for BBC 2. I asked Dan how the media crew making the programme responded to all this deep inner transformation stuff going on in the young people.

Dan commented, "They were really blown away. The BBC staff said, 'We have never had a programme that actually saw young people change. We've had lots of programmes where young people often say, 'This is how I've changed,'' but actually in the programme you saw them making different choices in life; you saw them choosing different clothes they wanted to wear - and these weren't things we were enforcing on them; it was just because they were finding out who they were - they were starting to pull away from society and go, 'Just a minute! Who am I? What do I want from life?' It was an amazing thing to see. We didn't expect that, so we were as amazed as the media company and the BBC. Some of the guys from the BBC who first saw it were crying, just because of how emotional it is watching these young people change in just a short period of time."

So many parents said 'Thank you!'

So when the series was broadcast, how did viewers react?

As Dan reported, the Romance Academy team have been overwhelmed by thousands of emails: "We've had so many parents say, 'Thank you! For the first time I was able to talk to my kids about some of these issues. We wanted to talk to our kids but we just didn't know how.Thank you so much for your programme because I sat down with my daughter/son, and after it finished we just had an honest chat about some of the things that came up in the programme.'

Now even more recently, with the news on 23rd January that Manchester mother Sue Axon has failed in her High Court bid to win for parents the right to be informed if their under-16 teenager daughter is undergoing an abortion, the significance of these kind of stories from parents should not be underestimated. Anything that opens up communication between parents and teenagers on the subject of sex, could have the potential for avoiding very serious consequences for our young people.

'I'm 14. I was gonna go out this Saturday and have sex.'

One email was from a teenage girl who said, 'I'm 14. I was gonna go out this Saturday and have sex, because all my friends have had sex and I feel so alone in why I'm waiting. I used to understand a little bit why it was worth waiting for, but now I was confused.' Apparently her mum made her watch the first programme, and after that, she knew she was either going to wait for a really special relationship or she was going to get married first, but either way it just instilled in her why she was waiting, and why it was so important.

You have to be willing to say, 'Save sex'

Picking up on that example, Dan commented,

"That 14 year-old girl had never ever heard, which is quite sad for our schools, but she had never heard anyone say, 'You can save sex,' instead of saying, 'Look, you have to have safe sex.'"

Romance Academy are now designing a pack to aid discussion of some of the issues, because so many schools are already closely watching the series. Dan reported that so many teachers are saying, 'For the first time we've had honest chats about sex. We had to teach about sex and alcohol and drugs, but we've never had a good resource that young people relate to.'

Dan continued: "One of the biggest messages I think that has come back is the amount of people that have already started again in lessons saying that abstinence is an option. For so long it's been a word we haven't used or have been scared of using, but lately because of the programme, they have started to say, 'Actually, it is an option.' We have to give this to young people. And giving them the option doesn't take away their free will. That's what we've been scared of happening. A lot of schools for so long have just been saying, 'Look, you've gotta have safe sex.' We have to be willing to say, 'Save sex,' as well.