from Christian Concern
Legal Counsel to the Christian Legal Centre Roger Kiska analyses the Department for Education’s updated guidance on relationships, sex and health education
This month, the Department for Education has released its long awaited updated guidance on Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education. The guidance is to be introduced from September 2026 and applies only to England. The guidance has received a major overhaul, largely for the better, but as will be detailed below, also for the regrettable.
The background: statutory requirements
Section 80 of the Education Act 2002 requires that all maintained schools teach relationships education as part of primary education, without a right of removal, and that secondary schools teach RSE without a right of removal for relationships education and a right of removal for sex education which may be overridden by the Head Teacher where exceptional circumstances exist. Health Education must also be taught.
Section 80A of the Act requires that the Department for Education publish guidance about the teaching of RSHE. The Independent School Standards applies Section80A relating to relationships education (primary), RSE (secondary), and having due regard to the DfE’s guidance, to independent schools. The Standards do not, however, require independent schools to teach health education.
Section 80A(2) outlines what must be taught as part of statutory relationships and RSE:
(a) the pupils learn about—
(i) the nature of marriage and civil partnership and their importance for family life and the bringing up of children,
(ii) safety in forming and maintaining relationships,
(iii) the characteristics of healthy relationships, and
(iv) how relationships may affect physical and mental health and wellbeing, and
(b) the education is appropriate having regard to the age and the religious background of the pupils.
Since the inception of statutory RSE, the DfE has greatly expanded the meaning of Section80A(2)(a)(i) to go well beyond teaching that same-sex marriage is law and that there are different forms of family structures. The earliest guidance spoke broadly, stating that schools must teach LGBT content, rather than defining what that content must be. It then signposted to external organisations with pro-LGBT promoting ethos’s like Stonewall and the National Education Union.