Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to improve sex education in PHSE lessons to reduce the scale of and prevent incidences of sexual assault.

The new statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE), which came into force in September 2020, emphasises that schools should be alive to issues such as everyday sexism, misogyny, homophobia and gender stereotypes, and take positive action to build a culture where these are not tolerated, and any occurrences are identified and tackled. The guidance states that schools should make clear that sexual violence and sexual harassment are not acceptable, will never be tolerated and are not an inevitable part of growing up.

Following Ofsted’s review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges in 2021, the department has committed to developing additional support to help teachers deliver statutory RSHE effectively and confidently. The government’s October 2021 ‘tackling violence against women and girls strategy’ emphasises the importance of educational interventions to change harmful attitudes. To ensure consistency of approach, the department will publish non-statutory RSHE guidance in 2022 providing more detail on when specific content around harassment and abuse should be taught. To support teacher development further, we will work with experts to host a series of national webinars on pornography, domestic abuse and coercion, and sexual exploitation. The department will also monitor and evaluate teacher confidence to deliver these difficult topics, continuing to build a programme of support that meets teachers’ needs.

The department has also published revised statutory guidance, ‘keeping children safe in education’, which has been strengthened to better support schools and colleges to identify and prevent abuse, and respond appropriately where abuse is reported. The department will shortly be launching a consultation on the non-statutory ‘behaviour and discipline in schools’ guidance. which will provide more practical advice to schools about how to encourage good behaviour and respond effectively to incidents of poor behaviour, including advice on how to create a safe and respectful school culture in which sexual harassment and violence are not tolerated.