The Scottish Government has published updated statutory Guidance on the Delivery of Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood (RSHP) Education in Scottish Schools.
In this explainer, we outline what the updated guidance says and explore what it means in practice for schools and education settings.
It has been issued under the Standards in Scotland’s Schools etc. Act 2000 and sets out clear expectations for all schools and education settings in Scotland. Local authorities and the schools they manage must have regard to it in carrying out their statutory duties.
RSHP update – key takeaways
This explainer will provide fuller details regarding the guidance update. At a glance, the summaries are:
The guidance is statutory and applies to all local authority maintained schools and education settings in Scotland
It strengthens expectations around learning on consent, online harms, gender-based violence, and LGBT inclusion
It introduces new Thematic Outcomes, including a specific outcome on LGBT Inclusive Education
Parents and carers should be engaged and informed to support learning at home
Withdrawal applies only to specific sexual health elements of RSHP – not to wider learning about relationships, equality, or prejudice-based bullying
The purpose of RSHP is prevention and child protection
Why has the guidance been updated?
The update follows a series of policy developments and social changes since the previous guidance was published in 2014, including:
A national review of Personal and Social Education (PSE), launched in 2017 by the Scottish Government, which identified the need to strengthen learning in Health and Wellbeing and improve consistency across schools.
A recommendation from this review that RSHP guidance be updated to ensure consent education is age and stage appropriate and reflects the real issues children and young people face, particularly in online environments.
Recommendations from the multi-stakeholder working group tasked with identifying educational responses to homophobic bullying in 2018, which called for RSHP guidance to be updated to better address homophobic bullying, reflect diverse families and relationships, include LGBT themes, and adopt an outcomes-based approach.
Significant changes in young people’s lives and experiences since 2014, particularly an increased use of digital technologies and social media, and emerging and evolving online harms associated with this, including early exposure to pornography, sexual harassment and extortion, image-based abuse, grooming, and the growing risks associated with artificial intelligence.
Changes in sexual health and wellbeing trends across Scotland, including increases in sexually transmitted infections among young people and rising demand for support following sexual violence.
Feedback from children and young people, gathered through public consultation and engagement work led by Young Scot and the Scottish Youth Parliament, which directly informed the updated guidance.
Children and young people increasingly encounter information about relationships online, where content may be misleading, harmful, extreme, or unregulated. The updated statutory guidance is intended to ensure schools can provide trusted, preventative learning that supports children and young people to understand healthy relationships, recognise unsafe or abusive behaviour, and know where to seek support.
The role of RSHP education
RSHP education has a central role in child protection and safeguarding. Through creating opportunities for age and stage appropriate learning about relationships, boundaries, consent, and respect, it helps learners develop the confidence to talk about concerns, disclose harm when it occurs, and seek support from trusted adults.
This preventative approach supports child protection practices in schools and education settings, and contributes to the identification and reduction of abuse, bullying, and other harmful behaviour within and beyond schools and education settings.
New ‘Thematic Outcomes’ for all schools
The updated guidance is structured around a whole-school approach and is organised using a set of new Thematic Outcomes. These complement and update broader, well-established RSHP learning.
Rather than prescribing individual lessons or resources, the updated guidance sets out what children and young people should experience through learning over time, allowing teachers to use professional judgement to plan learning appropriate to their context and learners.
The new Thematic Outcomes cover areas including:
Consent and healthy relationships
Gender equality and the prevention of gender-based violence
Faith and belief
LGBT Inclusive Education
They apply to all schools and education settings and should be included across the curriculum, rather than delivered in isolation.
The Scottish Government considers that RSHP education complements other aspects of a child and young person’s learning and makes an important contribution to their development.
This helps fulfil their right to learn about their growing bodies, relationships (including online relationships), sexuality, sexual health and parenthood. It supports learning and understanding of healthy relationships and ensures children and young people understand the importance of setting and respecting appropriate boundaries and are confident to uphold these.
In doing so, it can be used as a preventative tool to help reduce domestic abuse, gender-based violence, and other prejudice-based behaviours, by empowering pupils to support and challenge their peers in a safe way.
The updated guidance places an emphasis on working in partnership with parents and carers in the delivery of RSHP education, while also upholding children’s rights. Children and young people have a right to learn about relationships, wellbeing and safety, and to have their views taken into account in decisions that affect them, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
Parents and carers remain a child’s primary educators, and schools are expected to engage openly with them about RSHP education. This includes sharing information about curriculum content and planned learning to support conversations at home.
Where concerns arise, the guidance is clear that schools should respond through respectful and non-judgemental dialogue, focusing on the purpose of RSHP education, the child or young person’s best interests, and child protection responsibilities.
Parents and carers may request withdrawal only from the sexual health elements of RSHP learning. Withdrawal does not apply to wider learning about relationships, respect, equality, human rights or prejudice-based bullying.
For example, withdrawal would not apply to learning about friendships, diverse families, marriage or civil partnership, or tackling homophobia, misogyny, or racism. It may be accommodated for specific planned sexual health content, such as learning about reproduction or sexual intercourse. Schools are expected to ensure that any decisions relating to withdrawal are informed and proportionate.
Schools have legal duties under the Equality Act 2010 and a responsibility to deliver a curriculum that reflects society and prepares young people for life in modern Scotland. Learning about different families, cultures, religions, and protected characteristics is part of delivering a factual education for all learners.
Allowing withdrawal from such learning would undermine schools’ responsibilities and obligations to prevent discrimination, address prejudice-based bullying, foster good relations, include all learners and families, and develop curriculum content using teacher professional knowledge and expertise. For these reasons, withdrawal applies only to specific sexual health content and not to wider curriculum learning.
What does the guidance mean for LGBT Inclusive Education?
LGBT Inclusive Education is a distinct national policy commitment within Scottish education, and has its own national guidance to support schools and education settings. It has been developed to address and prevent prejudice-based bullying, which is still common in schools.
The updated RSHP guidance complements this. It sets out a specific Thematic Outcome (p. 18) which states that children and young people should learn in an environment where LGBT people, families, and experiences are recognised and included in the curriculum.
The statutory guidance is clear that LGBT Inclusive Education is not optional and is not limited to one-time lessons or awareness days. For schools, this means that LGBT-related learning content should be included within regular learning and teaching from the Broad General Education through to the Senior Phase.
Learning should be factual, relevant and suitable for the age and stage of learners, and integrated across curriculum areas rather than treated as a stand-alone topic. Schools are expected to use professional judgement to plan learning that reflects their learners and local context.
More broadly, both the updated RSHP guidance and the Guidance on LGBT Inclusive Education set out that learning should be relevant to each curriculum and subject area. LGBT Inclusive Education is therefore not confined to RSHP lessons alone.
Some elements will naturally sit within RSHP, such as learning about homophobic bullying, healthy relationships, and respect for others. Other learning will take place more widely across the curriculum. For example, learners might explore the life and work of Alan Turing in Social Studies while studying World War II, or use codebreaking as a stimulus in Mathematics to develop an understanding of number patterns and sequences.
This cross-curricular approach means that inclusion is part of everyday learning and relevant to the curriculum context, rather than treated as a separate or exceptional topic.
Children and young people learn within an environment where LGBT identities, families and experiences are recognised, respected and included across the curriculum.
Learning is factual, relevant and age‑appropriate, helping pupils understand diversity, challenge prejudice and recognise the impact of discrimination on LGBT young people. Teachers foster safe, supportive spaces for discussion, are alert to confidentiality needs and respond sensitively to disclosures. By embedding inclusive content across subjects and modelling respect, teachers help ensure every learner feels seen, valued and able to develop a confident sense of identity.
RSHP education (and broader anti-prejudice education) is sometimes the subject of disinformation or sensationalism, particularly on social media.
At times, political groups and online actors have presented this learning as controversial or have implied hidden agendas, using emotive language designed to provoke concern or outrage. Such assertions misunderstand both the purpose and the content of RSHP education.
RSHP education is not delivered in isolation – it sits within a broader child protection and rights-based education framework. Learning content is planned in alignment with statutory guidance to ensure it is age-appropriate and factual, with progression learning as children and young people mature, supporting their safety and wellbeing.
The purpose is to equip learners with the knowledge and understanding that they need to stay safe, recognise abuse or harm, establish healthy and respectful relationships, and seek support or disclose harm when they need to.
RSHP education contributes to the identification and prevention of child abuse, violence, sexual exploitation and grooming, bullying, and other harmful behaviour. This helps to ensure that children and young people are informed and protected as they grow up in a complex and changing world.
It is important to consider the wider context in which children and young people are growing up today.
Ofcom research has shown that children in the UK are provided with access to the internet from an early age, with many having a smartphone at primary school, and some children as young as three accessing the internet within the home. By the end of primary school, the majority of children are online independently.
Children and young people often encounter information about relationships, sexuality and sexual health, and identity online before they encounter it in school. Online content is not always accurate or appropriate, and can include unsafe advice, harmful stereotypes, pornography, misogynistic, racist or homophobic content, or material that normalises abusive or dangerous behaviour.
Providing clear and accurate information within a structured learning environment is a safeguarding measure.
Schools deliver this learning with care and professionalism, with curriculum content shaped by national guidance and professional standards. Parents and carers should be engaged in RSHP education through clear communication about what is being taught and why, to support conversations at home.
A range of established child protection charities in Scotland and across the UK have consistently supported high quality and evidence-based relationships, sexual health and wellbeing education as a critical prevention tool that helps keep children and young people safe.
For further information, we recommend visiting the NSPCC’s Learning portal, which provides information about the purpose of RSHP education. Example curriculum materials that schools can engage with are also publicly available via the rshp.scot portal.
Further Information
We recommend that schools and education authorities engage with the revised guidance in full, available here, to identify whether the new Thematic Outcomes are currently included in curriculum content or need to be updated.
Teachers and school staff can access additional information about LGBT Inclusive Education in Scotland through the Scottish Government’s guidance and the national professional learning course. This course includes curriculum-making tools and considerations for effective practice.
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