What the RSHE 2026 Framework Means for Secondary Schools

The RSHE 2026 changes

On 15 July 2025, the Department for Education published updated statutory guidance for Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) — the first comprehensive revision since 2019. The new framework comes into force on 1 September 2026, with schools required to have regard to it from that date.

This is not a minor revision. The 2025 guidance introduces approximately 70% more learning outcomes at secondary level compared to 2019, a significant expansion in scope that touches curriculum content, school policy, staff capability, and how schools engage with both pupils and parents. For senior leaders, it represents a governance and planning challenge as much as a curriculum one.

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Seven Guiding Principles

The 2025 guidance opens with seven guiding principles for RSHE delivery — a structural feature absent from the 2019 version. Schools must develop their curriculum with each of these in mind:

• Engagement with pupils — the curriculum should be informed by meaningful engagement with pupils to ensure it is relevant and responsive to their real experiences

• Engagement and transparency with parents — schools must engage with parents on content and make all materials available to them on request

• Positivity — teaching should build positive attitudes and healthy norms, avoiding language that normalises harmful behaviour or stigmatises young people

• Careful sequencing — content should be sequenced so that pupils are equipped before they encounter relevant experiences, not after

• Relevant and responsive — the curriculum should be adapted to the needs of pupils in the local area, including working with local partners where appropriate

• Skilled delivery of participative education — delivered by trained staff or qualified external providers who can facilitate interactive learning without causing alarm

• Whole school approach — RSHE should be embedded within a broader school approach to wellbeing, behaviour, and safeguarding

The first principle — pupil engagement — carries particular weight for Ofsted purposes. The guidance states that RSHE should be "informed by meaningful engagement with pupils." Inspectors will look for evidence that student voice has actively shaped the curriculum, not simply that a policy document records it.

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Three areas of significant new content

Violence Against Women and Girls, Consent, and Sexual Ethics

The 2025 guidance goes substantially further than 2019 on consent. Schools must now teach 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" — and that "just because someone says yes to doing something, that doesn't automatically make it ethically ok".

Schools must also teach how inequalities of power can impact behaviour within relationships, including how people who are disempowered may feel they are not entitled to respect, and how those with unequal power might — "with or without realising it" — impose their preferences on others. This framing links directly to the government's stated mission to address violence against women and girls.

Online Misogyny, Incel Culture, and Influencer Content

The guidance explicitly requires schools to equip pupils to "recognise misogyny and other forms of prejudice". Schools must give pupils 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". This precise language — naming incels by name — does not appear anywhere in the 2019 guidance.

Schools must also teach that the internet contains "unacceptable content that encourages misogyny, violence or use of weapons", and that "online content can present a distorted picture of the world and normalise or glamorise behaviours which are unhealthy and wrong".

Research published in PLOS ONE in February 2025 found that 76% of secondary school teachers were extremely concerned about the influence of online misogyny on their pupils — a figure that reflects the urgency the guidance is responding to.

AI, Deepfakes, and Image-Based Abuse

The 2025 guidance substantially strengthens expectations in this area. Schools must now teach:

• That keeping or forwarding indecent or sexual images of someone under 18 is a criminal offence, even if the image was created by the child themselves and/or using AI-generated imagery

• The prevalence of deepfakes, how they can be used maliciously, the harms they cause, and how to identify them

• That some social media accounts post things which have been "created with AI" and that users may present "highly exaggerated or idealised profiles"

• The serious risks of generating or sharing such content, including potential criminal charges and imprisonment

This is new statutory content with no equivalent in the 2019 guidance. Schools whose RSHE does not address AI-generated images will be operating outside current statutory expectations. The draft KCSIE 2026 guidance, published for consultation in February 2026, also addresses AI-generated imagery in the context of child-on-child abuse — though it is important to note that KCSIE 2026 remains a consultation draft, not yet statutory.

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Practical implementation

Now to Easter 2026. Complete a gap analysis of your current RSHE provision against the new statutory requirements. Focus particularly on the new content around sexual ethics beyond consent, online misogyny, incel ideology, AI-generated imagery, and deepfakes. Update your RSHE policy and document your parent consultation process — the guidance requires that all materials be made available to parents on request.

Easter to July 2026. Source or develop curriculum materials aligned to the new learning outcomes. Invest in staff training — particularly for form tutors and PSHE leads — given the specificity and sensitivity of new content around misogyny, incel culture, and AI abuse. Conduct and document your pupil consultation, which the guidance requires to be meaningful, not token.

From September 2026. Deliver the updated programme. Ofsted will assess RSHE as part of personal development and safeguarding judgements — not as a standalone subject inspection. Inspectors will look beyond policy documentation for evidence that RSHE is shaping school culture: through the way staff talk about the curriculum, through reduced levels of low-level harassment, and through pupil confidence in reporting concerns.

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What Ofsted Will Be Looking For

The 2021 Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges found that sexual harassment had become so normalised among young people that many students did not report it because they considered it a standard part of school life. The 2025 guidance is an explicit response to that finding. Schools that can demonstrate a coherent, evidence-informed programme — with genuine pupil voice, staff trained to facilitate participative learning, and measurable intent to shift school culture — will be well placed for inspection from September 2026.

Resources and next steps

The Department for Education has committed to a ring-fenced RSHE training grant, though full details had not been published at the time of writing. The Sex Education Forum has published a detailed summary of the guidance changes, and the National Association of Head Teachers has provided guidance for school leaders on implementation planning.

Social Media Resilience® delivers RSHE-aligned programmes on online misogyny, AI and deepfakes, and digital resilience for secondary schools across England. Our sessions are designed by safeguarding specialists and subject experts, and are mapped to the new statutory guidance.