Recommendation 28

DfE also told us that it has made relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory in schools since 2020, and in May 2024 revised the curriculum to include discussions on online harm, social media influencers, sharing of intimate imagery and upskirting as a new offence. In terms of evaluating the success of this work, DfE told us that it has had a good awareness among school leaders, and some studies show that the changes to the RSE curriculum could reduce violence in teenage relationships by as much as 17%.67 We asked DfE about the effectiveness of this work, since the rates of problematic relationships are not being reduced. DfE told us that the lack of data on under 16–year–olds and transparency on survivors’ experiences means that the ground keeps shifting in terms of where the harm is coming from. When asked whether DfE considers its approach as sufficiently agile to respond to evolving harms, DfE told us that it is important to keep the RSE curriculum up to date.68