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RSE: A focus on healthy relationships

Pastoral issues PSHE Curriculum Pupil wellbeing
Research evidence suggests we are not doing enough to teach pupils the basics of healthy relationships. Rachael Baker considers how a focus on future relationship skills can ensure meaningful RSE


How can we as educators use relationships and sex education (RSE) to help prepare our learners for their adult relationships?

The Sex Education Forum’s 2021 RSE Poll (SEF, 2022) found that 28% of young people had not learned anything about how to tell if a relationship is healthy from their RSE at school. A further 31% said they had received lessons on this topic but had not learned enough.

Without these skills being taught in the classroom, how can our learners go out into the world and navigate adult relationships with confidence?

The Sex Education Forum recently hosted an event focusing on how educators in special schools can create a meaningful and relevant curriculum for learners by focusing on relationship skills, rather than just facts and knowledge about sex.

Special schools often take a “life-skills” approach to the curriculum, and it absolutely follows that RSE should be taught in the same way. But isn’t this how we should be teaching our learners in mainstream too?

We need to teach young people in all our schools the relationships skills they will need in their adult life. We need to teach them how to behave towards someone they fancy, and how to negotiate for the type of relationship they want.

Learning about intimate and sexual relationships builds on a solid foundation of understanding and skills about relationships in general, including friendships, relationships with colleagues, with people who help us, and with the people in our community.

The government’s RSHE guidance (DfE, 2019) is peppered with the words “pupils will know…”, but it is not facts alone that will see our learners through in their adult relationships.

Listing the six different STIs may be important, but this alone isn’t going to prevent you catching one. Instead, we need to teach the skills that underpin, such as perception of risky behaviours, and how to use condoms and where to get them from.

We need to consider the practicalities for the user, the likelihood and impact of human error on efficacy, and how to have conversations with a partner about using condoms and having STI tests.

When I am training teachers, I am often asked to recommend resources or activities, but it is judicious learning outcomes which should form the scaffold of our curriculum.

An effective curriculum for RSE will be a blend of knowledge, values and attitudes, and skills. When writing our learning objectives, we need to frame them to seek the values and the skills. Rather than “pupils will know…”, how about “pupils will understand why…”, “pupils will be able to…”, or “pupils will demonstrate…”.

Meaningful RSE is a phrase I use a lot in special schools. What does it take for RSE to be meaningful to our learners? Meaningful is about learning that persists.

Meaning is the “stickability” – where the facts connect with the skills. It is what connects starchy algebra lessons with being able to work out which special offer represents better value. In RSE it is being able to convert facts into life-skills.

It is knowing that a conversation with a partner about switching to a hormonal contraceptive is connected to a conversation about STI risk and previous partners.

As well as understanding that we should not say unkind or threatening things to people, it is being aware that an unsolicited compliment can make a person feel objectified and vulnerable.

When we are developing our lesson plans, let us focus not on which activity we could use but instead on which skills we can impart. How will this learning support your student, in their future, in a conversation in a nightclub, or a bedroom, or an office?

In the classroom, skills require practice to embed, and the practice can come in the form characterisation activities in groups to demonstrate understanding and empathy. Opportunity to work through realistic scenarios in the safe learning space will give learners tangible practised skills to carry forwards into their adult relationships.

Similarly, while we develop our discussion of relationships in key stages 3 and 4 to include intimate and sexual relationships, we must not stop talking about friendships and platonic relationships.

We must ensure that our learners in mainstream settings, just as in special schools, are given ample opportunity to hone and fine-tune their friendship skills, to confidently negotiate, to seek consent, and to develop their network of support.

For RSE to be meaningful we need to be connected with our learners’ future relationships and sexual health, and all that this encompasses. Most importantly we need to remember that our role is to equip our learners with the skills they will need to access sexual health and enjoy their sexuality when they are old enough and ready.

While the evidence and the knowledge give our young people their foundations, it is their skills, values and attitudes which enable them to reach for the sky.

  • Rachael Baker is senior RSE specialist at the Sex Education Forum, a charity dedicated to supporting quality relationships and sex education. Visit www.sexeducationforum.org.uk


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