ArticleArchives of sexual behavior2023
Department for Education Statutory Guidance for Relationships and Sex Education in England: A Rights-Based Approach?
Article in Archives of sexual behavior, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Symbolic Interactionism and Grounded Theory in research on the health of children and adolescents: a scoping review.Revista latino-americana de enfermagem · 2026Article
- Exploring multisectoral collaboration in implementing comprehensive sexuality education framework at the provincial level in Zambia: a qualitative study.Global health action · 2025Article
- Postdigital Bystanding: Youth Experiences of Sexual Violence Workshops in Schools in England, Ireland, and Canada.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
In England, the Children and Social Work Act (HMSO, 2017) bestowed compulsory status on relationships and sex education (RSE), which means that young people's right to receive RSE has been codified in law. This paper analyzes how this right is upheld and enacted within the Department for Education (DfE) (2019) statutory guidance on RSE for schools in England. The analysis suggests that the guidance features contradictory discourses in which young people's rights are ostensibly advanced, but remain structured by adult-centric, heteronormative understandings of sex and relationships. It upholds a decontextualized and legalistic approach to rights, responsibilities, informed choice, and decision making. A narrow conception of rights is particularly evident regarding young people's digital sexual cultures, which are predominantly framed in terms of risk and harm. We argue that scholars should investigate how educators are designing and delivering RSE in light of the guidance, and the opportunities for and obstacles to a genuinely "rights-based" approach to RSE. While the policy discussed in this article is specific to England, the discussion has wider relevance for practitioners and policymakers across cultural and geographic contexts as it draws upon a model for analyzing how young people's sexuality is presented and addressed in legislative and curricular documentation.
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