Sex and Relationship Education

(asked on 2nd December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking to support the use of relationship and sex education to address the increase in self-generated indecent images of children online and, in particular, to develop targeted approaches for 11 to13 year-old girls.


Answered by
Baroness Berridge Portrait
Baroness Berridge
This question was answered on 16th December 2020

The department is committed to supporting schools to deliver high quality teaching of Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), which includes teaching about online safety.

Health Education includes specific content about online safety and appropriate behaviour that is relevant to pupils’ lives. It also includes content on how information and data is shared and used in all contexts. For online safety, this includes sharing pictures, understanding that many websites are businesses, and how sites may use information provided by users in ways they might not expect. As with all curriculum teaching, schools have the flexibility to tailor their teaching to specific cohorts and to the needs of their pupils.

The RSHE statutory guidance sets out that pupils should know that sharing and viewing indecent images of children (including those created by children) is a criminal offence which carries severe penalties, including jail. More detail of the content which should be taught in RSHE is available in the statutory guidance here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.

To support teachers to deliver the content effectively, the department has developed teacher training modules that are available to download here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-relationships-sex-and-health. The department worked with a wide range of stakeholders to develop the training content, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Brook, the Sex Education Forum and the PSHE Association. We also contracted with subject matter experts such as Parentzone, Childnet, and Durham University.

The new RSHE subjects complement the embedded computing curriculum, which covers the principles of online safety at all key stages. This includes teaching on how to use technology safely, responsibly, respectfully, and securely, how to keep personal information private, and where children and young people can go for help and support when they have concerns about content or contact on the internet or other online technologies.


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