Respectful Relationships (Secondary)

Curriculum content:

1. The characteristics of positive relationships of all kinds, online and offline, including
romantic relationships. For example, pupils should understand the role of consent, trust,
mutual respect, honesty, kindness, loyalty, shared interests and outlooks, generosity,
boundaries, tolerance, privacy, and the management of conflict, reconciliation and
ending relationships.
2. How to evaluate their impact on other people and treat others with kindness and
respect, including in public spaces and including strangers. Pupils should understand
the legal rights and responsibilities regarding equality, and that everyone is unique and
equal.
3. The importance of self-esteem, independence and having a positive relationship with
oneself, and how these characteristics support healthy relationships with others. This
includes developing one’s own interests, hobbies, friendship groups, and skills. Pupils
should understand what it means to be treated with respect by others.
4. What tolerance requires, including the importance of tolerance of other people’s beliefs.
5. The practical steps pupils can take and skills they can develop to support respectful and
kind relationships. This includes skills for communicating respectfully within
relationships and with strangers, including in situations of conflict.
6. The different types of bullying (including online bullying), the impact of bullying, the
responsibilities of bystanders to report bullying and how and where to get help.
7. Skills for ending relationships or friendships with kindness and managing the difficult
feelings that endings might bring, including disappointment, hurt or frustration.
8. The role of consent, including in romantic and sexual relationships. Pupils should
understand that ethical behaviour goes beyond consent and involves kindness, care,
attention to the needs and vulnerabilities of the other person, as well as an awareness
of power dynamics. Pupils should understand that just because someone says yes to
doing something, that doesn’t automatically make it ethically ok.
9. How stereotypes, in particular stereotypes based on sex, gender reassignment, race,
religion, sexual orientation or disability, can cause damage (e.g. how they might
normalise non-consensual behaviour or encourage prejudice). Pupils should be
equipped to recognise misogyny and other forms of prejudice.
10. How inequalities of power can impact behaviour within relationships, including sexual
relationships. For example, how people who are disempowered can feel they are not
entitled to be treated with respect by others or how those who enjoy an unequal amount
of power might, with or without realising it, impose their preferences on others.
11. How pornography can negatively influence sexual attitudes and behaviours, including
by normalising harmful sexual behaviours and by disempowering some people,
especially women, to feel a sense of autonomy over their own body and providing some
people with a sense of sexual entitlement to the bodies of others.
12. Pupils should have an opportunity to discuss how some sub-cultures might influence
our understanding of sexual ethics, including the sexual norms endorsed by so-called
“involuntary celibates” (incels) or online influencers.