SUPPORT high-quality RSHE
A partnership between Brook and Sex Education Forum
Thanks to the support of more than 800 people who signed our pledge, and the many individuals who wrote to their MP about the draft RSHE guidance, the new RSHE Guidance, which comes into effect 1st September 2026, represents a significant improvement on the draft guidance that was published in 2024.
Gone are the age restrictions suggested in the 2024 guidance. Instead the new guidance has been broadly welcomed for offering a more comprehensive and up-to-date approach to Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). It expands the curriculum to address issues that are increasingly relevant for young people today including AI literacy, deepfakes, setting boundaries in relationships and understanding and challenging misogyny.
These changes will help ensure that young people receive education that reflects the realities of the world they are growing up in.
While the new RSHE guidance is a great improvement, it still only applies up until Year 11, leaving older teens who are likely entering their first relationships without guidance on healthy relationships, consent or coercive control.
Making RSE Mandatory to age 18
Make It Mandatory is a multi-award-winning grassroots campaign founded by Faustine Petron and four friends. The campaign was inspired by Faustine’s experience of an abusive teenage relationship and the lack of education that left her without the knowledge to recognise it. The campaign fights to make Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) mandatory up to the age of 18 as one step to preventing violence against women and girls.
The Make It Mandatory campaign has successfully secured a Private Member’s Bill, sponsored by Alistair Strathern MP. If passed, the Bill would change the law to make RSE mandatory to age 18.
We need the government to support this private members bill and honour their commitment, if they are serious, about preventing violence against women and girls and keeping young people safe. That’s why we’re asking supporters to email their MP and urge them to back the Bill.
