ThinkTank calls for schools to appoint leaders in relationship violence, modeled on the success of mental health coordinators.
A study by the Home Office-supported Youth Fund (YEF) hopes that young teenagers in England and Wales will be taught “learnings on preventing relationship violence” aimed at addressing emotional, physical, sexual violence, psychological abuse, stalking and harassment.
Although UK schools have had legal guidance on teaching relationships, gender and health education since 2020, YEF CEO John Yates said too many students still haven’t been taught how to recognize healthy, unhealthy relationships or get out of harmful relationships.
As a first step, YEF recommends a pilot scheme that offers £8,000 to £8,000 for “leading violence against women and girls,” a £8,000 for training or external support.
“One of the major implementation challenges in providing these lessons across schools is to convince teachers that it is necessary, that this happens to children, and that we need to focus on it,” Yates said.
“But schools often get a bit nervous about the ads that they are doing these sessions. They don’t want to advertise to future parents that there may be issues with relationship violence. But the point is, this is everywhere.”
YEF’s survey states that nearly a third of teachers taking RSHE classes have not received training, but more than a quarter said they are not convinced that they will teach their children how to leave unhealthy relationships. Almost half said they had a hard time explaining how to intervene if a child witnessed sexual assault.
Lucy Emerson, CEO of the Sex Education Forum, said that despite recent improvements to the curriculum, only 50% of young people who say RSHE lessons are good or very good found in the survey.
“We find topics like adolescence are very well covered. Young people say it’s doing very well and say topics like agreement to some degree. But topics like pornography and power imbalances are kind of topics that say youth are very well covered or not covered at all,” Emerson said.
“That’s often the case that parents encounter as children. They say that sex education is very technical and very focused on adolescents and biology, and they say, “What is it like?” “How can you manage your feelings?” “How can you understand what’s going on here?”
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Topics include how to recognize signs of healthy, unhealthy relationships, and how to get help if necessary. Emerson said it is an important building skills for friendships, not just personal or sexual relationships. However, it was difficult to obtain the training and investments needed for teachers.
“To get a so-called tricky topic very well, teachers need to be confident in this subject area. They need to be able to have high quality, open discussions with students, not just fact-based teaching,” Emerson said.
“Children and young people benefit greatly from the skills to listen, empathize, respect each other, negotiate, understand, understand and express their emotions. It not only learns some facts, but also learns how to behave and respond.”