Education - delivery of relationships, sexual health and parenthood: draft statutory guidance - consultation report

Introduction and background to the consultation

The purpose of this consultation was to seek public views on the content of the statutory teaching guidance used to deliver relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP) education in Scottish schools.

The Scottish Government last published guidance for teachers on the conduct of teaching RSHP education at the end of 2014. That guidance was developed over the course of 2013 to take account of the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence and the Marriage and Civil Partnerships legislation.

Since the publication of the guidance in 2014, work to review Personal and Social Education and embed LGBT inclusive education across the curriculum both recommended the 2014 guidance be updated. RSHP education is also identified as a key strand in work to prevent and tackle gender-based violence and sexual harassment, through support for development of understanding of appropriate boundaries, consent and healthy relationships. These issues have been highlighted through Equally Safe^[1] and Everyone’s Invited^[2], on the experience of sexual harassment and gender-based violence in schools and society.

In addition to the recommendations above, given the passage of time and societal change, the 2014 guidance has become outdated and no longer provides suitable guidance for teachers on delivering RSHP education. The revised draft was developed by a core review group^[3], who were a subgroup of the then RSHP Special Interest Group, and selected due to their professional experience in health, education or another field relevant to RSHP education.

The consultation process involved two elements: an online public consultation, and young people engagement, details of which are set out below. This report is structured to reflect these elements, with analysis of the public consultation at Section 1 and analysis of the young people engagement at Section 2. The key themes from these two elements have then been combined to identify proposed next steps, set out in Section 3.

Online Public Consultation

The consultation sought public views on the content of the revised guidance. It asked for responses to 11 specific questions relating to the content of the revised guidance. An additional free text option was available for every question to enable respondents to provide further comment on their answer, should they wish.

The consultation was live on the Scottish Government’s Citizen Space online consultation portal. The consultation opened on 3 August 2023, for an extended period of 16 weeks to account for school holidays, closing on 23 November 2023.

The consultation attracted 4,233 responses representing a variety of views and included several campaign responses. The majority of consultation responses (3,791) were received through the Citizen Space consultation portal and reflected the views of mostly individuals but also of several organisations. Around a tenth of responses (442) were submitted on paper and were campaign responses, identical to responses submitted through the online portal.

All consultation responses were logged and analysed. Analysis of the themes emerging from this consultation is set out at Section 1.

Young People Engagement

Alongside the online public consultation, Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament were commissioned by the Scottish Government, during the same period, to engage with young people to gather their views. This engagement was based on the five key sections contained in the revised teaching guidance that were also subject to public consultation.

There were two elements to this engagement:

• An online survey, led by Young Scot, covering elements of the consultation including consent, inclusive education, and right of withdrawal. The survey, hosted online, launched on 15 November 2023 and ran until 19 February 2024. It was promoted to young people via Young Scot and Scottish Youth Parliament channels, including via social media, Young Scot’s Membership Platform, and across Young Scot volunteer networks.
• Six focus groups, led by the Scottish Youth Parliament, held in Aberdeen, Dumfries, Edinburgh (x2), Stirling and Shetland. Participants to the focus groups were recruited through existing Young Scot networks. In line with the approach to the survey elements of the public and young people surveys, discussions were not focused on the content of RSHP education, but rather whether the teaching guidance provides a sufficient framework to ensure the young people receive the learning in RSHP education that they seek.

In total, Young Scot engaged with 321 young people through online survey activities and the Scottish Youth Parliament. Between October 2023 and March 2024, six focus groups were carried out with 49 young people from existing Young Scot networks. These sessions took place with groups in:

Aberdeen – 7 participants.

Dumfries – 3 participants.

Girlguiding (Edinburgh) – 14 participants.

LGBT Youth Scotland (Edinburgh) – 11 participants.

Stirling – 6 participants.

Shetland – 8 participants.

Analysis of the young people survey and focus groups were undertaken by Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament respectively. Analysis reports were provided to the Scottish Government, the findings of which are summarised in Section 2. The full reports are available online^[4,5].

Matters out of scope

The purpose of the consultation was to ensure that the revised teaching guidance achieves its intended purpose of supporting teachers to effectively deliver relationships, sexual health and parenthood (RSHP) education in Scottish schools.

As was made clear in the introduction to the consultation, the Scottish Government did not seek views on the broader health and wellbeing curriculum, RSHP experiences and outcomes, or on the specific content of individual teaching resources and tools already available to support delivery of RSHP education in Scotland. Where responses referred to matters that were out of the scope of the consultation, these elements were not considered within the analysis. Where responses covered a mixture of matters that were in and out of scope, only those matters out of scope were discounted, with the remainder of the response considered.

In light of the above, responses that related to the following are considered out of scope:

• Content of learning in RSHP education, such as:
  • What is taught as part of sex education, including teaching about marriage, online relationships, abstinence
  • Toxic masculinity and disparities in physical and mental health outcomes between genders, gender-based violence and informed consent
  • Content relating to LGBT identities and relationships
• Content of teaching resources for RSHP education, including specific images used in specific learning, accessible resources
• Learning in independent schools
• LGBT inclusive education broadly, but not specific to RSHP education
• Advice on pastoral support and communication with home for transgender and non-binary young people, and how to overcome gender stereotypes in accessing learning and making subject choices.
• Guidance on access to single sex spaces such as gender neutral or gender specific toilets in schools.
• Comments requesting action covered by other existing programmes and policy areas on a broader curricular content and unrelated to RSHP education such as Equally Safe at School, Anti-Racism in Education, etc
• Comments requesting clarity or further guidance already available in existing publications, e.g. child protection policies, Respect for All, Supporting Transgender Young People in Schools etc.