The need for early age-appropriate RSE

A primary school teacher recently confided to me that a 10-year-old boy at her school had described a girl in his class as “good enough to rape”. 

We don’t know where the boy first heard this language and it is doubtful that he understood the impact of his words but as Mayor of London Sadiq Khan recently said, "male violence against women and girls can start with words. But it doesn’t stop there”. 

Evidence of this is demonstrated by the Everyone’s Invited campaign, which hosts the testimonies of over 50,000 young survivors of peer-on-peer sexual harassment and abuse, and has released the names of nearly 3,000 schools mentioned by young people. Worryingly, 14 per cent of those schools were primary and given that children in the UK are criminally responsible from the age of 10, there is an urgent need for schools to be proactive in preventing sexual harassment through an age-appropriate RSE curriculum at an earlier stage. 

These concerns also took centre stage at the recent National Education Union’s annual conference as teachers called for more time, training and resources to address the negative impact of porn on children and follows a call by the Children’s Commissioner for England for parents to start talking to their children about online pornography and sexual harassment when they are as young as nine or 10, ideally before they have a smartphone or social media account. 

The vulnerability of even younger children was highlighted in a recent report by the Internet Watch Foundation which found evidence that children as young as three had become victims of self-generated child sexual abuse. 

The RSE curriculum has been mandatory since September 2020 and you could be forgiven for thinking that progress would start to be seen by now; for children and young people to be getting the right amount of information, at the right time and which is comprehensive enough to prepare them for every stage of their development. 

However, the findings of a recent Sex Education Forum (SEF) survey, which asked young people about their experiences of RSE at school and at home reveals that progress has stalled, with no overall improvement in school RSE compared to a 2019 SEF survey. 

Clearly the pandemic significantly disrupted the implementation of the statutory elements of personal, social, health, and economic education (PSHE), which has impacted greatly on the delivery of RSE to a whole generation of school-aged children.

Whilst many lessons were delivered, either virtually or through online platforms, the SEF survey found that during the pandemic, almost half of young people received no RSE at school or at home during Covid lockdowns. For many primary school children, lockdown would have been the first time they were taught the statutory requirements. To then receive their first experience of RSE via an online lesson may not have been appropriate, especially when the delivery of effective RSE is so dependent on creating a safe learning environment, tricky to enforce in a virtual setting.  

Many teachers we train tell us that they're worried about covering issues too early in the curriculum, saying they feel it “isn’t age-appropriate” for children to learn the correct words for their body parts, but what we're hearing from young people is that subjects are not being covered early enough, and what they are being taught isn't keeping them safe.

How can a child tell a trusted adult they’re being abused if they don't even know what vocabulary to use to explain what's happened? On some occasions, teachers have told us that after participating in Coram Life Education workshops on healthy relationships, children have in fact disclosed abuse as it dawned on them what had been happening. 

On primary teacher training courses, PSHE is only given a cursory mention. We need to elevate the status of PSHE and RSE to ensure that primary schools can implement a whole-school approach, through both an age-appropriate RSE curriculum, and the school culture and ethos, to be proactive in preventing sexual harassment. Teacher training colleges have been tasked with equipping trainee teachers with the right knowledge and skills to deliver effective RSE. But they, along with the Department for Education, could better harness the expertise held in the third sector. 

But while teachers are struggling, parents don’t even know where to start, what language to use and when the right time is to talk about key issues. The recent SEF survey also revealed that nearly half of young people received no RSE from parents or carers across the Covid lockdowns. And with schools not delivering this either, children were left without this vital education. Some parents are concerned that RSE will rob children of their innocence, but the evidence shows that an uninformed child is a vulnerable child.  

Ultimately, what we need is a concerted effort so that both parents and teachers are well supported and trained to ensure that they are in a position to implement the RSE statutory requirements effectively. Only then will children and young people receive the RSE they want and so desperately need. 

Lisa Handy is programme and training manager for relationships and sex education at Coram Life Education