NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Sex education--from traditional school programs to new-and-improved versions to abstinence-only tactics--doesn't seem to be changing teens' behavior, according to two new reports.

The studies, both reported in the June 15th issue of the British Medical Journal, found that various approaches to sex education failed to change teen pregnancy rates, the number of kids having sex or risky behavior such as unprotected sex.

In one study, UK researchers compared a specially designed sex education program called SHARE with conventional school programs. Secondary school students had 20 SHARE sessions over 2 years, starting when they were 13 to 14 years old.

Compared with traditional sex ed, SHARE offered more sessions, more thorough teacher training and lessons on such things as how to "negotiate" relationships and handle condoms, the study's lead author told Reuters Health.

It also gave kids "practical information," such as how to use local sexual health services, said Daniel Wight, a researcher at the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow, Scotland.

But there was no evidence that these shifts from conventional sex ed changed students' behavior, according to the researchers. Among the more than 5,800 students who completed the study, there were no differences in sexual activity or "sexual risk taking" between kids in the SHARE program and those who took standard sex ed.

In the second study, researchers reviewed 22 reports on various pregnancy prevention programs in the US and Canada--including school-based sex education, abstinence programs, and education and counseling at family planning clinics.

The investigators found that, overall, the programs did not cut teen pregnancy, delay the start of sexual activity or improve birth control use. Several abstinence programs and one school program were actually associated with higher pregnancy rates among the partners of boys who participated, according to the lead author Alba DiCenso, of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Wight said that his and DiCenso's studies "confirm an emerging picture from other studies of school sex education" that suggests current programs are limited in their benefits.

He suggested that school-based sex education should employ "new means" to allow individual students to get information when they most need it. "School-based drop-in clinics might be the best way to provide this," Wight said.

However, he added, there is evidence that the most promising programs are those that are long-term and "much broader" than sex education alone--promoting, for example, teen community service.

In addition, DiCenso and colleagues note that there is evidence pregnancy prevention programs need to start much earlier than they normally do.

They also point out that countries with low teen pregnancy rates may have something to teach others. In the Netherlands, they write, the pregnancy rate among 15- to 19-year-olds is about 8 per 1,000--compared with 93 per 1,000 in the US, and about 63 and 43 per 1,000 in England and Canada, respectively.

SOURCE: British Medical Journal 2002;324:1426-1430, 1430-1433.

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