Health Education and Sex and Relationship Education: Training

(asked on 15th September 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of training for teachers delivering the new Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education curriculum.


Answered by
Robin Walker Portrait
Robin Walker
This question was answered on 20th September 2021

The consultation on the statutory guidance for relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) curriculum revealed that many teachers and subject leads needed training and support to deliver the new content. The department invested in a package of support to develop teacher capability and competence to teach high quality RSHE. The package of support included a training and peer support programme, delivered by teaching schools and based on the department’s training modules which were developed with subject experts and tested with teachers. In the 2020/21 academic year, the programme reached 3,800 schools, and provisional data for the last wave, which ended in July, shows a further 1,000 schools have been supported. This is a cascade model of training whereby those trained are expected to share the training with other teachers in their school and wider school networks. Teaching schools have made their training materials and other resources freely available on their websites. The department’s training modules are also freely available for all schools to download via the following link: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-relationships-sex-and-health.

The department is developing plans to monitor national implementation of RSHE over time, including new quantitative and qualitative research, which will seek to understand the quality of implementation, including teacher confidence in teaching the statutory requirements, and identifying training and support needs to inform future policy development.

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