Programme

STUDENTS – Relationships

These sessions are best delivered in tandem with the BODIES sessions. It is our preference to start with ‘All the Relationships’ talk as our first meeting with any group of younger students. It lays good inclusive foundations to begin further work around bodies & boundaries. Our work enhances your RSHE curriculum and fully supports your safeguarding policy and provision. Some schools use us to introduce a scheme of work. Others ask us to wrap it up and answer tricky questions at the end of a topic. Some schools would prefer us to focus on one specific area when RSHE classroom teachers require extra support and backup! So, for this reason, this work can be very bespoke…

All the Relationships – Yr5, Yr6 or Yr7

  • Being curious about relationships
  • Getting good answers
  • Inclusive families
  • Permission seeking and boundaries
  • Beginnings of consent
  • Who to talk to if there is a problem?

Developing Digital Relationships   – Yr9 and above

  • Digital Lives & human connection
  • Peer bonds & Homosocial imperatives
  • Pornography: sexism, racism, violence
  • Neurological reward systems & habits
  • What is free? Surveillance & Manipulation
  • Intervening & Reporting

Early Digital Relationships – Yr7 or Yr8

  • Humans, images & the past
  • Pornography & the Law
  • Unrealistic expectations
  • Sharing of nudes & semi-nudes
  • Relationships & Consent
  • Help-seeking & reporting

Intimate Relationships – Yr10, Yr11 or Yr12

  • Understanding intimacy (reality v. pornography)
  • Reproduction and/or Pleasure?
  • Choosing to be sexually active
  • Complex consent, communication & connection
  • Green Flags/Red Flags
  • Being upstanding

All the Relationships – Yr5, Yr6 or Yr7

  • Being curious about relationships
  • Getting good answers
  • Inclusive families
  • Permission seeking and boundaries
  • Beginnings of consent
  • Who to talk to if there is a problem?

Early Digital Relationships – Yr7 or Yr8

  • Humans, images & the past
  • Pornography & the Law
  • Unrealistic expectations
  • Sharing of nudes & semi-nudes
  • Relationships & Consent
  • Help-seeking & reporting

Developing Digital Relationships   – Yr9 and above

  • Digital Lives & human connection
  • Peer bonds & Homosocial imperatives
  • Pornography: sexism, racism, violence
  • Neurological reward systems & habits
  • What is free? Surveillance & Manipulation
  • Intervening & Reporting

Intimate Relationships – Yr10, Yr11 or Yr12

  • Understanding intimacy (reality v. pornography)
  • Reproduction and/or Pleasure?
  • Choosing to be sexually active
  • Complex consent, communication & connection
  • Green Flags/Red Flags
  • Being upstanding

Future Relationships – Yr12 or Yr13

  • Society & sexuality
  • Authenticity & intensity
  • Victim blaming narratives
  • Sexual harms & reporting
  • Accessing support services
  • Positive & balanced relationships of the future

STUDENTS – Bodies

All of our sessions around bodies and the ‘Changes that Adolescence’ brings assume a basic understanding of human reproduction. So, these sessions shouldn’t be booked unless National Curriculum Science or PSHE has covered sperm, eggs and fertilization in humans. Once this has been discussed we can deliver sessions to complement this biological model. We offer honest and frank conversations on anatomy, correct terminology, bodies & bodily fluids. And as students move up the school, we can visit them again and again to develop more nuanced conversations around sex & pleasure. There is a strong focus on empowerment and the emotional/psychological elements of intimacy. The consequences and risks of sex are discussed, and all sexualities should feel included in this work. We are reluctant to deliver these talks without our work on relationships too.

Your Private Body – Yr5, Yr6 or Yr7

  • Being curious about bodies
  • Body image & pressure
  • Breasts & chests
  • Genitals & correct terminology
  • Looking after your private body
  • What to do if you are worried…

Keeping Your Body Safe & Sexual Health – Yr10, Yr11 or Yr12

  • Sexual wellbeing & pleasure
  • Inclusive sexual health
  • Sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
  • Barrier methods
  • HIV & Aids, PrEP & PEP
  • Accessing services and getting tested

*We strongly advise that this session is delivered only after ‘Intimate Relationships’

**If you are looking for sexual health content for younger year groups please let us know.

The Adolescent Body: Puberty – Yr7, Yr8 or Yr9

  • Puberty – your questions answered
  • Feelings & Sensation
  • Male puberty explained
  • Menstrual wellbeing
  • Puberty products & the environment
  • Know your normal, ask for help…

Choice, Fertility & Families – Yr11, Yr12 or Yr13

  • Contraception choices
  • Emergency contraception & misinformation
  • FemTech
  • Pregnancy choices (incl. abortion)
  • Fertility – male & female
  • Families of the next generation

Your Private Body – Yr5, Yr6 or Yr7

  • Being curious about bodies
  • Body image & pressure
  • Breasts & chests
  • Genitals & correct terminology
  • Looking after your private body
  • What to do if you are worried…

The Adolescent Body: Puberty – Yr7, Yr8 or Yr9

  • Puberty – your questions answered
  • Feelings & Sensation
  • Male puberty explained
  • Menstrual wellbeing
  • Puberty products & the environment
  • Know your normal, ask for help…

Keeping Your Body Safe & Sexual Health – Yr10, Yr11 or Yr12

  • Sexual wellbeing & pleasure
  • Inclusive sexual health
  • Sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
  • Barrier methods
  • HIV & Aids, PrEP & PEP
  • Accessing services and getting tested

*We strongly advise that this session is delivered only after ‘Intimate Relationships’

**If you are looking for sexual health content for younger year groups please let us know.

Choice, Fertility & Families – Yr11, Yr12 or Yr13

  • Contraception choices
  • Emergency contraception & misinformation
  • FemTech
  • Pregnancy choices (incl. abortion)
  • Fertility – male & female
  • Families of the next generation

STUDENTS – Substances

These sessions are devised by our Substance specialist and are in line with the latest guidance on Relationships, Sex & Health Education. Your existing lessons around drugs, alcohol, tobacco, habit forming, addiction and harm-reduction can be supported and enriched by the use of an external speaker. A different voice. Another viewpoint. An expert in the field. Adding these talks to your planning will extend your RSHE curriculum in a bespoke way to complement and consolidate learning in this important area. Best delivered as part of a spiral curriculum so that we build up familiarity and connection with the students over a series of years. There are lots of links and overlaps with our work around relationships & bodies too. Intimacy often happens in risky environments where alcohol and substances are involved… so this work responds to those real-life situations.

Medicines & Legal Substances– Yr5, Yr6, Yr7 or Yr8 

  • Medicines and why we use them
  • Prevalence
  • Why some people might use substances
  • Legal substances – Caffeine, Nicotine (incl. Vaping), Alcohol
  • The law
  • Getting reliable information

Harm Reduction – Yr9 or Yr10

  • Peer behaviours
  • Strategies & Skills
  • Drug categories
  • Harm reduction messaging
  • Main focus: Vaping & Alcohol
  • Illegal substances such as cannabis & NOS can be discussed where appropriate

Freedom & Festivals – Yr11 or Yr12

  • A strong focus on fun, freedom and safety at Festivals & Events
  • Adolescent Brain rewards systems, risk & PFC
  • Recent data around illegal substances: risks, mixing, strength, unknowns
  • Harm Reduction including the ‘drug testing at festivals’ debate
  • The 5 Ds: how not to be a bystander
  • How to ask for help if things go wrong

Spiking Deep Dive – Yr12 or Yr13

  • What is spiking?
  • The Law
  • Myth Busting & attitudes towards spiking
  • Student insights
  • Signs to look out for
  • Where and who to ask for help

Vaping Deep Dive – Yr9 and above

  • Smoking compared to vaping
  • Prevalence of vaping & smoking with young people
  • The law
  • Short-term consequences & long-term risks of vaping
  • Spotlight on disposable vapes
  • Why vaping is so addictive?
  • Harm Reduction advice & how to get support

Habit & Addiction – Yr7 or Yr8

  • Attitudes towards substances
  • Making good choices
  • Your Chemical Brain
  • Habit forming & Addiction
  • Cravings, tolerance & withdrawal, lapse & relapse
  • How to access support/get help

Freedom & Parties – Yr9 or Yr10

  • A focus on what happens at parties and how to stay safe
  • Adolescent Brain rewards systems, risk & PFC
  • Alcohol & Vaping
  • Illegal Substances: can include cannabis, NOS, MDMA & Ketamine
  • Harm reduction messaging
  • Strategies and skills & how to ask for help if things go wrong

Next Chapter – Yr13

  • Complexities of being away from home
  • New friends and new challenges
  • Travelling and Gap Years
  • Freshers/Welcome week
  • Substances: Drug, Set & Setting
  • Accessing services away from home

Addiction Deep Dive – Yr9 and above

  • Attitudes & data around substance use
  • How substances work in the brain
  • Strategies to manage stress & difficult feelings
  • Understanding Addiction
  • Influences on Addiction
  • How to support/get help

PARENTS

Parent Consultations

Parental engagement is an essential part of effective RSHE. Parental consultations form part of the Statutory Relationships, Sex & Health Education guidance – and we believe that these conversations should be ongoing. Not just a tick-box exercise. We can help you glean Parent voice through pre-session surveys. It is really helpful to understand the whole Parent Community and how they feel about the delivery of this subject at your school. Do they understand why you are doing it? How you are doing it? What the links are with other subjects like biology & digital safety? These consultation sessions explore RSHE more widely and encourage parents to feel more confident and better informed to engage in these conversations at home.

Please note that parent sessions are offered as a live face-to-face session/webinar format. Recordings are not permitted.

Parent Consultation on Relationships & Sex Ed element of RSHE Guidelines

We will focus on why this subject can be sensitive and challenging, how this subject is delivered at your school, why it is a priority and where external agencies can enhance this programme. We will explore the Department of Education Statutory RSHE Guidance as well as recent reports from the Childrens Commissioner. The aim is to empower parents to engage and ensure they know where to get reliable, evidence-based research and further information/signposting.

  • Contextualising RSHE and your school
  • Looking at current UK data on sex and relationships
  • Introduction to Statutory RSHE
  • Positive and protective RSHE
  • The challenges
  • A and signposting
Parent Consultation on Substances element of RSHE Guidelines (specifically alcohol, tobacco & drugs)

We will focus on the statutory guidance for teaching about drugs, alcohol and tobacco, we will put substance use into a social context, explore the teenage brain, look at the difference between a habit and addiction and harm reduction. The session will look at potential protective factors and where to get reliable, evidence-based information and help if needed.

  • The current landscape
  • Adolescent brain & Risk taking behaviour
  • Importance of Peer bonds
  • Habit forming & Addiction
  • Harm reduction
  • Where to get good information
Positive RSHE at home… top tips for brilliant conversations
The ultimate goal of statutory RSHE is all adults working together, in school and at home, to improve conversations about these important topics. However, many parents feel out of their depth and it is vital we offer them support. These inclusive sessions are an opportunity to empower parents to seize as many learning moments as possible and carry on these conversations at home. We can model correct terminology and offer ideas for approaching these topics in a safe and age-appropriate way.
 
  • Early education
  • What to talk about & when
  • Approaching these topics
  • Big questions
  • Tips for sensitive issues
  • Q&A and signposting
Parent Preview of Agreed content

This is all about parental engagement and transparency and can be delivered in tandem with our other Parent work. A Parent Preview will allow your parent community to explore exactly the same slides we have agreed to deliver in your student session. This is offered before the student session is delivered. This means that each student session requires a separate Parent Preview – only open to families from that specific cohort. Consistent messaging is so important, so encouraging parents to attend these talks will inevitably mean your RSHE work has more impact and will empower parents to approach these conversations at home. We can talk parents through:

 

  • The context of our presentation
  • The agreed slides
  • Vocabulary & terminology
  • Diagrams & images used in the presentation
  • YouTube links/clips
  • Any questions you may have for us/the school

Some schools offer to share agreed content after the student work has been delivered. This format allows us to share authentic student voice, questions asked and student feedback with your parents, so that they can continue meaningful conversations at home. Please let us know if you would like to discuss parental engagement in more detail.

Vaping Deep Dive for Parents

We will focus on the topic of vaping which is now much more common than smoking amongst young people. This session will look at the risks of young people vaping, with a particular focus on disposable vapes, most popular with young people. We will also look at other emerging popular nicotine alternatives, such as nicotine pouches, with a focus on addiction in young people.

  • Prevalence of vaping & smoking amongst young people
  • Common questions about vaping
  • Risks of vaping, with a spotlight on disposable vapes
  • Why vaping is so addictive?
  • Impact of Peer Behaviours
  • The law
Festival Safety/ conversations at home before the event

This session will give parents, carers and guardians an insight into the festival environment, highlighting topics and areas that might be useful to discuss at home before the event. We will explore the sorts of things that can potentially go wrong for young people at a festival and how they can try and mitigate these risks, with a focus on help-seeking behaviour.

  • The festival environment & support available
  • The sorts of things that can ‘go wrong’
  • Substances & Spiking
  • Harm reduction & drug testing debate
  • Sexual Assault, Consent & Boundaries
  • How to ask for help if things go wrong

TEACHER TRAINING

Face to face and webinar based training

We create our teacher training in a very bespoke way to ensure we meet the needs of your school community and reflect your values & ethos. You can pick and chose what you want and need.Training is best when it is regular and revisited. So we urge schools to see this as an ongoing commitment, not just a ‘one off’.Many schools are working hard to combat issues such as misogyny and harmful gender stereotypes as well as addressing inclusion, consent culture, child-on-child abuse and harmful sexual behaviours. Similarly, conversations about substances can happen in different situations and settings, and as such, all adults in the school community will benefit from our RSHE training – so please consider including & upskilling everyone… we can assure you it will be engaging, interactive & discursive for even the widest audiences. 
RSHE TEACHER TRAINING
Whole-school culture INSET training for all staff
  • Introduction & interactive reflective work – your experience of RSHE
  • The big picture UK RSHE data
  • Statutory RSHE: the positives/challenges
  • Whole-school ethos & values
  • Creating cross-curricula links
  • Preventative school culture and working together to reduce harms

Pastoral teams including house/boarding/medical/support staff

  • What are they learning in RSHE lessons?
  • The ‘why’ and ‘how’ of RSHE
  • Their digital lives (images & pornography)
  • Building consent culture
  • How can you support these conversations beyond the classroom?
  • Q&A and further signposting

RSHE teachers

  • Creating Safe Spaces, Ground Rules & Tricky Questions
  • Gleaning student voice & digital tools
  • Managing Parental Engagement
  • Effective discussions & Tricky questions
  • Inclusive RSHE lessons (9 protected characteristics)
  • Skills, information, knowledge & assessment

*If there are any topics you would like to cover (for example, periods, sexual health, abortion , pornography etc) or particular issues you would like to explore, please just let us know and we will be very happy to discuss further.

With smaller groups we are able to model more active sessions and object-based learning. We encourage exploration, conversation and play. So if your training is face-to-face, we have a variety of games and hands-on activities for your team to engage with in small groups. For that reason you may consider break out rooms and a carousel. Just ask if you’d like to find out more.

SUBSTANCES TEACHER TRAINING
Whole-school culture INSET training for all staff
  • Introduction & interactive reflective work – your experience of RSHE
  • UK drug & alcohol prevalence data, availability and most common substance use
  • Questions from students
  • Key themes when discussing substances
  • Concept of Harm Reduction
  • Q&A and further signposting
We can also explore topics below in our training sessions (obviously this is time dependent and may require additional sessions), so please discuss any preferences with your trainer as soon as possible. 

RSHE teachers/ Pastoral Teams

  • Ground rules, language & tricky questions
  • Addiction
  • Adolescent Brain and how this impacts decisions, risk etc
  • Impact of Peer Behaviours
  • Strategies & Skills
  • Vaping – this can be a session in itself
  • Specific drugs: ketamine, MDMA, cocaine, cannabis, NOS, NPS, psychedelics  etc
  • Drug testing debate
  • Spiking 

Pre-recorded training

TEACHER TIME TRAINING 

We are really excited to be sharing these and hope that you have the opportunity to explore and learn with your RSHE team through the use of these pre-recorded sessions.
  • You will receive a Vimeo Link to access with your RSHE colleagues either in a department meetings or twilight session.
  • We recommend that you set aside 1hr30m to discuss and engage with the content. Prompts for these conversations are provided throughout.
  • Let us know your planned delivery date and we will create your password-protected link, this will be closed once the training has been screened.

You can purchase any or all of these:

 

SESSION 1: ‘The complexities of teaching impactful lessons about Nudes & Semi-Nudes’
Dr Emily Setty – Lecturer at University of Surrey

SESSION 2: ‘Teaching effectively about Coercive Control in Young People’s lives’
Alishya Dhir – Teaching Fellow at Durham University

SESSION 3: ‘Classroom interventions…dealing with Lad Culture & harmful sexual norms’
Dr Craig Haslop & Dr Fiona O’Rourke – Liverpoool University

RSHE SUPPORT PROGRAMME

Please see here for more details of our RSHE Support Programme.We have two fantastic RSHE Support Programme Consultants who have a wealth of knowledge to pull from.

We will carry out a full audit of your RSHE provision. This will raise conversations about your curriculum, resources, parental engagement and teacher training. The process takes 6 weeks and involves regular online meetings to assess progress and set manageable targets along the way. You will be invited to involve a few of your team members in this process.

 

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to find out more or book a free introductory consultation.