Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will set out the advice she plans to provide to schools on how to talk about sexual consent in an age-appropriate way.

The PSHE Association has developed non-statutory guidance for schools when teaching about the topic of consent. This was published in March 2015 and can be found at www.pshe-association.org.uk. The department strongly welcomes this guidance. The PSHE Association’s guidance will help teachers clearly establish the legal framework around consent and supports the government’s ‘This is Abuse’ campaign, which helps educate young people about damaging behaviours within relationships.

When teaching sex education, it is a statutory requirement for schools (including academies through their funding agreements) to have regard to the Secretary of State’s Sex and Relationship Education Guidance (2000), which can be found online: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sex-and-relationship-education

The statutory guidance makes clear that all sex and relationship education should be age-appropriate and that schools should ensure young people develop positive values and a moral framework that will guide their decisions, judgments and behaviour.