Our Response to the Draft RSHE Curriculum

We welcome the revised RSHE curriculum which was published for public consultation on Thursday.

We are pleased to read that teachers will have permission to talk about suicide prevention by delivering age-appropriate lessons which will encourage our young people to reach out for help when necessary and signposting relevant individuals and organisations that can help.

Our formal response to the draft curriculum will be overwhelmingly supportive however we have two reservations:

• Suicide prevention is not compulsory in this curriculum – ‘schools may wish to talk to young people about suicide prevention’. We strongly believe this is essential - schools should be talking to young people about suicide prevention.

• ‘Direct references to suicide should not be made before year 8’ – this is one year late. We have spoken to too many suicide-bereaved parents of 11- & 12-year-olds to know that we need to be speaking openly and age-appropriately to Year 7s about suicide prevention.

Despite our concerns we believe that this revised RSHE curriculum is a positive first step forward in protecting our young people from the biggest risk in their lives – themselves by suicide. It is a very strong foundation on which to add compulsory suicide prevention lessons in schools in the future. This remains our aim.