Sexual health and relationships: Policy context

A survey of more than 1,000 pupils asked if something had happened “a lot” or “sometimes” found 92 per cent of girls and 74 per cent of boys reported experiencing sexist name calling, with 80 and 55 per cent respectively being the victim of sexual comments (see graphics).

Girls in particular reported being the victim of more serious incidents, including sexual assault (79 per cent), sexual coercion (68 per cent) and unwanted touching (64 per cent).

The pupil survey also revealed how abusive experiences in the classroom can continue into pupils’ online world, with nearly half of boys and nine out of 10 girls being sent unwanted explicit videos or photos. Around three quarters of schoolgirls that responded said they were pressured to provide sexual images of themselves “sometimes” or “a lot” or had pictures of themselves shared without consent. In addition, half of girls and one in five boys had videos of pictures of themselves that they didn’t know about shared.

Latest data gathered through the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) for the 12 months up to 31 March 2020, estimates that 7.5 per cent of adults aged 18-74 experienced sexual abuse before the age of 16, or 3.1 million people. Of this group, 37 per cent reported the perpetrator was a friend or acquaintance and 30 per cent were sexually abused by a stranger.

The CSEW shows the majority of victims did not tell anyone about their sexual abuse at the time, with “embarrassment” being the most common reason. In the year ending March 2019, police forces in England and Wales recorded 73,260 sexual offences where there is data to identify the victim as a child.

The CSEW also estimates that there were 773,000 adults aged 16-74 who were victims of sexual assault (including attempts) in the year to March 2020, of which 618,000 were female. While the volume of sexual offences recorded by the police has almost tripled in recent years, the latest figures for the year ending March 2020 show a decrease of 0.7 per cent to 162,936 offences compared with the previous year.

Other data that give an insight into children and young people’s sexual health and relationships indicate more encouraging trends. Figures up to 2018, show that teenage pregnancy rates halved over the previous decade, while the abortion rate has remained relatively stable over the same period (see graphics).

Young people aged 16-24 have the highest rates of common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) but the number of tests undertaken through the National Chlamydia Screening Programme declined 13 per cent from 2015-19. The latest annual STI data shows there was a two per cent increase in chlamydia diagnoses among 15- to 24-year-olds in 2019, a 13 per cent rise in syphilis diagnoses and 26 per cent rise in gonorrhoea. Rates of genital warts cases have dropped to very low levels since the introduction of the HPV vaccine programme in the previous decade.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest greater exposure to online pornography can influence young people’s views of sex and expectations of sexual relationships (see research evidence). Research published by the Board of Film Classification (BBFC) last year found that exposure to pornography rises as children go through adolescence, with 51 per cent of 11- to 13-year-olds reporting seeing pornography rising to 79 per cent of 16- and 17-year-olds.

Most boys and girls spoken to for the BBFC research indicated they had seen content they found upsetting or disturbing at some point, usually relating to “violent” or “aggressive” pornography. Girls raised concerns that aggressive depictions of sex would be seen as “normal” among young male viewers of pornography, and accordingly be copied in real-life sexual encounters. Around four in 10 who took part in the online survey agreed that watching it made “people less respectful of the opposite sex”, while 18 per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds who had an active sex life said they had either asked or been asked to incorporate things from pornography into their relations with partner(s).

Policy and practice response

The Ofsted report found a mixed picture over how local safeguarding partnerships were responding to the issues of sexual abuse in schools. Most partnerships said they were aware of the issue, but few children reported being aware of action to tackle it in their area.

When asked by Ofsted about the problem, nearly half of schools said there was no instances to report prompting Spielman to state that there needs to be an “acceptance” among schools and wider agencies that the issue is “happening – even if it is not evident”.

She said working between local partners needs to be stronger as does information sharing between schools.

Experts hope that the introduction of mandatory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in secondary schools from September 2021 – a delay of a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic – will help tackle the issue. RSHE lessons were mandated, alongside relationships education in primary schools, to address the gap in some children’s knowledge about sex and relationships.

Schools and local authorities have had two years to prepare for the introduction of the requirements – statutory government guidance on the teaching of RSHE was published in June 2019. It covers broad areas of relevance and concern to young people today as part of the personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education curriculum.

Knowledge about safer sex and sexual health, intimate relationships, gender identity and what the law says are all issues covered. This includes a range of important facts and the rules regarding sharing personal information, pictures, videos and other material using technology.

The PSHE Association says the guidance should ensure that every child is guaranteed an education that covers mental health and wellbeing, physical health (including healthy lifestyles and first aid) and learning about safe, healthy relationships, including understanding consent and negotiating life online.

Meanwhile, Ofsted has updated its education inspection handbook to include an emphasis on RSHE as a preventative measure. It makes clear that a carefully sequenced RSHE curriculum that allocates enough time for topics that children and young people may find difficult, such as consent, needs to be implemented across all schools.

Understanding consent is a crucial area of RSHE that, according to sex education experts, needs more attention from schools (see big debate). They say the Ofsted review highlights how young people can be coerced into behaviour they do not feel comfortable with and which is why schools need to do more to embed understanding of consent at an earlier age.

Schools have taken different approaches to teaching RSHE. Some have trained teaching staff through linking with specialist organisations. For example, Northumberland County Council has used a portion of its education budget to fund a training programme for teachers delivered by the Sex Education Forum on how to teach the curriculum (see practice example). Schools in other areas have brought in charities such as the West End Women and Girls Centre to provide peer support initiatives as part of the RSHE offer (see practice example).

Despite the often contentious debate around sex education and the proliferation of explicit material online, education and health experts are generally optimistic that the introduction of compulsory RSHE will help young people navigate this complex area of growing up.

ADCS VIEW
RSHE will play key role in pandemic recovery

By Gail Tolley, chair of the ADCS educational achievement policy committee and strategic director, children and young people, London Borough of Brent

The requirement for all state funded secondary schools to teach relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) – or just relationships and health education in primary schools – from September is positive and was long overdue. When the Department for Education first consulted on draft statutory guidance for RSHE in 2018, Sex and Relationships Education had been last updated in 2000. Clearly, a lot had changed in this time - children and young people now face new pressures and challenges from the internet and social media that simply did not exist 20 years ago.

That health education and RSE have been aligned is encouraging as this approach covers all areas of a child’s wellbeing. What is more, the statutory guidance calls for a whole-school approach so that RSHE, and the important lessons that it will teach pupils, becomes a common thread throughout the curriculum. With education and wellbeing recovery being so important to children’s futures, the introduction of RSHE seems like an opportune moment. The focus in the curriculum on mental health and wellbeing is particularly important, especially given the trauma that many of our children and young people will have experienced. Indeed, the pandemic will have, in many cases, exacerbated issues that existed prior to the lockdown. This is why it is so vital a whole-school approach is taken to education recovery and RSHE can be central to this when considering pupil mental health and wellbeing. However, for this to be a success, teaching staff must have access to appropriate training and regularly updated resources to ensure lessons fully reflect the challenges and risks children face.

The full roll out of RSHE across schools feels even more pertinent in light of Ofsted’s review into sexual abuse in schools and colleges. It made clear the sheer scale of sexual abuse, harassment and online sexual abuse experienced by our children and young people. Ofsted has since updated its education inspection handbook in time for September which includes an emphasis on RSHE as a preventative measure. As Ofsted points out, a carefully sequenced RSHE curriculum that allocates enough time for topics that children and young people may find difficult, such as consent, needs to be implemented across all schools. At a national level there is an opportunity to draw this together with different agendas, such as the government’s violence against women and girls strategy.

FURTHER READING

• Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges, Ofsted, 2021

• Young People, Pornography and Age Verification, BBFC, 2020

• RSHE guidance, DfE 2019
  
  

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