Exploring teacher and student voices to find examples of good practice to support the enactment of Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) in schools

BACKGROUND: Relationships and sex education (RSE) has become compulsory in all schools since 2020. Whilst there is statutory guidance to support schools with the implementation of RSE, there are many challenges being faced which are having a negative impact on successful RSE. Stakeholders (in this research being teachers and students) have differing perspectives on what can be done to implement RSE well but the cohesiveness between them can sometimes be strained. Whilst understanding the negative effects of poor RSE is important, there is also a need to understand how RSE can be implemented well in schools as the benefits of RSE have wide reaching implications for the development of young people. AIM: The aim of this thesis is to explore the voices of students and teachers to understand what can contribute to the successful enactment of RSE in schools. The research examined ways by which this is done from the two stakeholders, teachers and students. With the identified school, this research wanted to understand what is going well in their practices relating to RSE with hopes to apply these examples to other schools who may be having difficulties. METHOD: The research used a case study approach with one school as its main sample. This school is an all-through provision meaning they have students on role from ages 4-18 years old across a primary, secondary and sixth form. Participants included both teachers and students from the primary and secondary school phases. To collect data, focus group were used with set questions related to RSE and how it is being implemented. To analyse the focus groups, a thematic analysis was conducted. The thematic analyses were firstly done separately and within for students and teachers. A second analysis was conducted across the teachers and students to see if there were any similarities or difference amongst the participants. FINDINGS: The findings revealed several approaches and methods being used by the case study school to have successful implementation of RSE. In particular, the school uses and acts upon student voice to ensure that they have a say in their learning. They also adopt dialogical classroom techniques which focuses on discussion across the curriculum in each classroom. These techniques help to foster rich and critical discussion on various topics which help to support language and communication skills. Other notable findings related to the need to develop positive relationships between stakeholders, parental involvement in the planning and teaching of RSE and autonomy for teachers and students to have a personalised curriculum with regards to RSE teaching. CONCLUSIONS: Those in education have an important role to play when it comes to supporting students learning with RSE. To have success in this area is to have success in many other areas of development. This research has found examples of how RSE can be implemented well into other schools and should be used by other professionals, such as EPs, to foster better successes with the implementation of RSE