Teaching About Coercive Control: What Works in the Secondary Classroom

Why coercive control education belongs in your RSHE

Coercive control — the pattern of behaviours by which one person seeks to take away the liberty and autonomy of another within an intimate or family relationship — was criminalised in England and Wales under the Serious Crime Act 2015. Yet a decade later, awareness of what coercive control looks like in practice remains low among young people, and the behaviours that constitute it are frequently normalised within adolescent relationships.

Online culture has accelerated this normalisation. Misogynistic influencer content frequently portrays controlling behaviour as a marker of male strength and romantic commitment: monitoring a partner's communications, restricting their social contact, requiring proof of location, or using financial dependency as a lever for compliance. Young people who consume this content may recognise these behaviours as familiar rather than harmful.

The revised RSHE statutory guidance, in force from September 2026, explicitly requires schools to teach about healthy and unhealthy relationship dynamics, including the conditions that enable coercive and controlling behaviour. This section provides practical guidance on how to deliver this content effectively.

What coercive control looks like for young people

In adolescent relationships, coercive control often presents differently from adult domestic abuse contexts. Practitioners working with young people describe a pattern of behaviours that includes: demanding constant contact and responses via messaging; using jealousy as evidence of love; isolating a partner from friends through negative commentary or demands on their time; monitoring location through shared apps or repeated questioning; creating emotional debt through gifts or grand gestures; and using explicit images — whether real or AI-generated — as leverage.

Many of these behaviours are reinforced by social media content that frames them as romantic rather than controlling. The challenge for educators is to help young people develop the language and conceptual framework to recognise controlling dynamics in relationships they or their peers may be experiencing, without triggering defensiveness or shame.

Classroom approaches that work

Effective coercive control education for young people shares several characteristics. It uses scenario-based learning rather than abstract definition — presenting realistic relationship situations and inviting students to analyse the dynamics rather than telling them what to think. It acknowledges the genuine appeal of intense romantic investment, rather than simply condemning possessiveness as bad. It creates space for students to reflect on their own relationship experiences, including friendships, without requiring disclosure.

The Expect Respect programme, developed by SafeLives and delivered by specialist providers across the UK, is among the most rigorously evaluated approaches to healthy relationship education for young people. Research on its effectiveness shows significant improvements in young people's ability to recognise controlling behaviour and in their confidence to seek help.

Schools should also ensure that their approach to coercive control education is connected to their safeguarding procedures: students who identify controlling behaviour in their own relationships — whether as a victim or as a perpetrator — need clear pathways to appropriate support.

The online dimension of coercive control

Digital technology has transformed both the mechanisms of coercive control and the ease with which it can be perpetrated. Location sharing, read receipts, screenshot monitoring and the threat of sharing intimate images have all become tools of control in adolescent relationships. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline reports consistently that technology-facilitated abuse is now present in the majority of the domestic abuse cases it handles.

Young people's RSHE needs to address this digital dimension explicitly. Students who understand how technology can be weaponised within relationships — and who have thought through what healthy digital boundaries look like — are better protected, and better equipped to support peers who may be experiencing controlling behaviour.