Sex and Relationship Education

(asked on 2nd February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to introduce mandatory Relationship education for primary schools.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 8th February 2021

The regulations for the new subjects of Relationships Education (for all primary school pupils), Relationships and Sex Education (for all secondary school pupils) and Health Education (for all pupils in state-funded schools) came into force in September 2020. Given the circumstances faced by schools during the COVID-19 outbreak, the Department clarified that the statutory requirement allows some flexibility over when schools discharge their duty in teaching the new curriculum within the first year of compulsory teaching.

The Department invested up to £2 million in the financial year 2019-20 and is investing up to £4 million in the current financial year to fund a support programme of work to help schools in their delivery of the new curriculum.

The support programme includes grant funding to 21 lead Teaching Schools covering all eight regions to deliver a train the trainer and peer support programme to primary and secondary schools in their region. This programme has supported over 2,000 schools since May 2020, and we expect a further 1500 schools to be helped by spring 2021. The training materials and other resources developed for this programme by the lead Teaching Schools will be available for access by all schools from April 2021.

Furthermore, Oak National Academy provides free remote education video lessons and resources covering the new Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum. To support the hard work of schools in delivering remote education, Oak National Academy was very quickly brought together by over 40 teachers, their schools and other education organisations. The Department has made £4.84 million available for Oak National Academy both for the summer term of the academic year 2019-20, and then for the 2020-21 academic year, to provide video lessons in a broad range of subjects for Reception up to Year 11. Information about Oak National Academy and the resources available can be accessed via this link: https://www.thenational.academy.

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