Doing the creative audit My first task was to carry out a creative audit at our school to find out young people’s views on their RSE provision. I started out by working with two small groups of young people from years 10 and 11.
I wanted to work with some of the more vulnerable learners who I thought would benefit most from the opportunity to come together and talk about RSE. I wanted to give them the opportunity to share their experiences of gender, sexuality, relationships and mental health and to use these experiences to inform the new curriculum. I met for an hour with each group and I used the What Jars You?, Runway and STOP / START plates activities to open up conversations about RSE at our school. What I found was that what young people wanted to talk about wasn’t really the RSE curriculum but their experiences of bullying and poor mental health. I was distressed to find out how undervalued young people felt by staff and the ignorance and the discrimination around gender and sexuality that they experienced accross the school. The group were really engaged in the discussion but one hour wasn’t enough! Some of the young people left upset as there wasn’t enough time to finish the conversations or work through some of the issues that the session had brought up.
After the session one young person went home and wrote me a letter about his experiences of coming out as gay and how he wanted things to be different for other LGBTQ+ young people at our school.
My next step was to find out more about the RSE curriculum. I met with a group of 15 young people in year ten and eleven to explore what they were learning and what they wanted from the new RSE curriculum. This became my first RSE group. We used the CRUSH cards and sorted them into categories, which got the group talking about their experiences of RSE.
Next we created call out cards where young people wrote their opinions on RSE and how they would like to drive things forward at our school.
The creative audit made clear what I probably already knew - that there are big gaps between what we are teaching young people in the curriculum and what they already know and want to know.
Young people were critical of the overly biological approach that they feel we take to RSE. They said it sometimes feels like they are being taught about ‘breeding’ rather than human relationships and emotions.
They wanted to learn about the positive aspects of sex and relationships and to talk about things like intimacy. They were clear that teachers need more training, especially with regards to LGBTQ+ lives and communities. They want teachers to be more away of the issues that LGBTQ+ young people may face so that they can help ensure that in our school community people of all genders and sexualities can express themselves as they are and feel accepted.
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