Introduction to RSE

New to relationships and sex education (RSE) or looking for a refresher? If you’re looking to prepare yourself or your staff to deliver this important content and improve your approach across the whole school, you need the right knowledge and resources on hand to ensure an accurate, engaging and interesting learning experience.

Produced in partnership with the Open University and Cardiff University, this introductory course will help you prepare by giving you a grounding in the core themes of sex and relationships education. Understanding the basics such as types, frequency and attitudes towards sex will enable you to confidently deliver evidence and data supported teaching.

Not only will we identify how to explore topics in further detail such as STIs, pleasure and relationships and consent, we’ll also outline how you can engage young people in developing your curriculum.

The course takes 1 hour and 30 minutes to complete and is ideal preparation for our core course How to Deliver RSE – a must have for any educator delivering RSE.

Please note this course was last updated in 2022 and uses data from NATSAL-3. There may be out of date content and it may be less accessible than our other courses.

Course structure

The course is split into two modules: 

1. Teaching and learning about sex
2. Building your RSE curriculum with young people

Each module allows you to explore your understanding of topics for yourself and provides you with resources you need to implement your learning.

Learning objectives

By the end of this course, you will:  

• Understand why relationships and sex education, taught in schools, is important.
• Be able to explain that young people experience sex in different ways.
• Understand the importance of LGBT+ inclusivity.
• Know that NATSAL is a reliable source of statistics about sex and attitudes about sex.
• Understand how to access the NATSAL data for use in RSE teaching.
• Understand that challenging assumptions about what young people think and feel about sex is important.
• Be aware of topics relevant to sex and relationships education to explore in further detail.
• Understand why involving young people in when, how, what and who teaches RSE (or equivalent) is important.
• Be able to formulate ways of engaging young people in curriculum creation in relation to sex and relationships.