Northumberland gets schools up to speed in statutory RSHE

• Initiatives includes free training from the Sex Education Forum and access to an online portal containing a range of teaching resources

• All schools have met the requirements and feedback from teachers on the quality of training has been positive
  
  

ACTION

Northumberland’s schools are being helped to introduce statutory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) through the council’s strategic approach to communication, training and partnership working.

Although the government outlined the new curriculum would be compulsory from September last year, it stipulated that schools that were not ready, or unable to meet the statutory requirements, should begin teaching by the start of the summer term in 2021. Northumberland County Council says almost all of its schools were ready by June to start delivering the new curriculum having previously been offered access to training and resources as part of its strategy. It adds that 13 schools in the county had already agreed to be early adopters of the statutory elements of the new curriculum in 2019. This was the same year that school nurses stopped delivering RSHE to year 5 primary and year 8 secondary school pupils after public health funding was discontinued, says Gill Finch, the council’s schools’ equalities co-ordinator.

Finch says the council’s decision to tap into its equalities and schools’ budget to train staff in RSHE on such a large scale was unprecedented for the region. The funding was used by the council to commission specialist training from the Sex Education Forum.

“The time was right to invest in something new and I feel like we spent the money wisely; it was a great decision,” Finch says.

With its schools scattered across a large area, the council was already used to the challenges the local geography presented in effectively engaging schools and parents. “It’s very difficult to find venues, sign people up, get them there and assume they can all make it on the same date,” explains Finch. “But by buying quality, high-profile training on their behalf and telling them it’s free for them to attend made it quite a compelling offer.”

The council chose Alnwick Garden for its central venue delivering primary, secondary and SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) courses with a further primary session held in the west of the county. By ensuring there was capacity for each of its 160 schools to attend – around 70 schools ultimately attended the sessions – and funding it centrally, each school was offered training that would have cost them £175 per person had they purchased it themselves from the Sex Education Forum, says Finch.

In response to a perceived need, a further continuing professional development session on masturbation was commissioned for special schools and parents and carers and delivered days before the first national lockdown in March 2020, she adds.

Fabienne Thompson, the council’s public health manager, says Covid has presented both opportunities and challenges for schools as they have prepared for the statutory curriculum. Exploring possibilities of delivering training online led the council to pilot a series of webinars for teachers around areas such as RSHE assessment and first aid.

“We tested them for just half an hour to an hour and we got lots of teachers doing it from their classroom at the end of the day,” explains Thompson.
“We are looking at recording them so they are available and whether there are more we can provide if this proves to be a better way of doing things given the challenges around teachers’ time.”

An online survey was also used to assess how much progress had been made by schools in terms of preparation for the new curriculum.

“While our response rate wasn’t very high, it did give us an overview of some of the key issues such as a request for more resources and how to deal with some of the more specific elements of the curriculum,” says Thompson.

A collaborative approach with the council’s integrated sexual health service will provide online resources that teachers can use to address questions on topics such as sexually transmitted diseases, she adds. These will be made accessible from the council’s dedicated online portal set up in 2019 to provide a central place for the latest information and guidance about RSHE.

Run by the online bulletin board service Padlet and linked off the main Northumberland Education website, the portal has allowed the council to easily and flexibly update the content it makes available to schools. As well as statutory guidance documents from the Department for Education, the portal covers topics such as mental wellbeing, sexting, cyberbullying, gender identity, intimate relationships and contraception advice. Short videos are also available showing a walk through of the council’s sexual health service and the range of support it offers to young people.

Finch says: “It has been successful and people are always telling me that they are looking at it. If something new comes on to our radar we can make it immediately available to our schools.

“It also allows us to tailor content for schools that want to give something specific to their young people.”

Thompson adds that the portal can signpost young people to resources that have been commissioned within public health such as drug and alcohol education.

“Providers in this area have requested from us that we create a Padlet specifically for when schools might be doing a particular element of the RSHE curriculum,” she explains.

“They don’t have the capacity to go out to every school in Northumberland but using the portal means we can deliver the information that is needed.”

Further partnership working has seen the council continue its role as a children and young people’s services champion for charity Stonewall. The programme helps local authorities to better support LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) children and young people through their services by providing access to expert resources and bespoke training.

The council says it is also developing a relationship with near-peer charity Sexpression which could see a collaboration with students at the University of Northumbria. It has also helped schools to carry out digital parental consultations during school closures and informed governors of their duties and the necessary requirements for their school to be compliant.

IMPACT

Feedback received from schools that were invited to attend the council’s Sex Education Forum-led training sessions has been encouraging with participants reporting it had improved their knowledge about statutory RSHE.

One attendee said: “Everything was practical and relaxed with plenty of hands-on activities and the chances to share expertise were great.”
Another said: “It has opened my eyes to the importance of having a holistic, whole-school approach.”

Finch says the council is embarking on the charity White Ribbon UK’s accreditation programme which aims to help organisations take a strategic approach to end male violence against women. “This will put a sharper focus on the teaching in schools about respectful relationships, sexual harassment, gender equality and stigma and humiliation,” she says.

“We’ve already identified a gap to fill regarding resources aimed at boys and young men and intend to work creatively to resolve that.”

Thompson believes increased instability around school attendances due to Covid makes RSHE teaching “even more important” given the areas that it covers.

“We need to look at how we cement a partnership approach in Northumberland and we will be updating our resources and developing our key contacts further.”

She says despite the statutory curriculum now being in place, a big challenge remains the lack of teachers trained in RSHE: “I would like to see teachers skill themselves up and become specialist in that subject area and then we could support and champion that in public health.”

Read more in CYP Now's Sexual Health and Relationships Special Report