At present, it is compulsory for all maintained schools to teach some parts of sex education such as the biology of puberty and reproduction as part of science. While the broader topic of sex and relationships education is currently not compulsory, it is contained within non-statutory personal social health and economic education within the National Curriculum and is strongly recommended within government SRE guidance. Legally, primary and secondary schools must have an up-to-date SRE policy, which should be available to parents.
Although SRE must be of high quality in every school, it is necessary to recognise that every school is different. In order to assess the needs of pupils, the Sex Education Forum has produced a toolkit SRE: Are you Getting it Right?, which contains simple activities designed for consulting pupils at Key Stage 3 and 4. The upcoming conference SRE: Getting On With It on 19 October will provide ideas and support on improving the quality of SRE and a new advocacy tool to help young people with local campaigning for better SRE will be launched.
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