Best Practice

Statutory RSE – a role for all teaching staff

Pastoral issues Safeguarding PSHE Curriculum Pupil wellbeing
Statutory RSE is not just a list of topics to tick off a list, it should be relevant to children’s everyday lives and reach across the curriculum. Indeed, in many ways, all teachers are teachers of RSE. Lucy Emmerson explains


With the advent of statutory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), many schools have created or refreshed the role of RSHE or PSHE education lead.

Quality provision rests heavily on having a specialist with subject leadership responsibility, but there is an important role for all school staff to understand the school’s approach to the subject and contribute to the success of RSHE provision.

As a starting point, all staff should know the basics of the statutory RSHE guidance and be aware of the wide-ranging curriculum content specified, which includes, friendships, stereotypes, menstrual wellbeing, fertility, sexual harassment, pornography, online harms, healthy relationships, accessing sexual and reproductive health services and more. Obviously, the statutory content is broken down by phase – primary and secondary – and staff need to understand this as well (see DfE, 2019).

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