Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of relationship and sex education at the north west London early adopter site.

The Department is working closely with over 1600 schools across the country who are acting, on a voluntary basis, as early adopters of relationships education; relationships and sex education (RSE); and health education. As early adopters, these schools have indicated their intention to start teaching the new requirements: relationships education (for primary aged pupils), RSE (for secondary aged pupils) and health education (all pupils in state-funded schools), during the academic year 2019/20, ahead of the subjects being compulsory from September 2020.

The Department has been working closely with these early adopter schools to develop a programme of support. Recently four national conferences took place (including for 229 early adopter schools based in the North West London and South Central Region), to help early adopters plan for delivery of the new subjects, and to enable the Department to learn about their current practices and assess support needs. Following feedback from the conferences, consideration is being given to what further regional support may be required.

This engagement with early adopter schools is helping the Department develop its programme of support for the new subjects, which will be available to all teachers from spring 2020. The programme will focus on tools that improve schools’ practice and will offer opportunities for teachers to improve subject knowledge, build confidence and share best practice. This support will be accessed through a new online service and will include an implementation guide, which will accompany the statutory guidance, case studies from early adopter schools, and innovative materials to support staff training. We will continue to test this package with early adopter schools.