Teach Us Consent

Petition Research Project at UQ

MS KAREN MADDEN DEAN OF RESEARCH & ENGAGEMENT

Early in 2021, Chanel Contos launched a petition calling for holistic and earlier consent education in Australia. With more than 6,700 testimonies of sexual assault and over 44,000 signatories, the petition represented a defining moment in the sexual health education of young Australians. Current and past St Aidan’s students joined their voices to the conversation, speaking up and speaking out for change. As a result of the petition, and the subsequent advocacy from scores of young women, education ministers around Australia have since unanimously agreed to mandate consent education in schools from 2023.

A key aspect of the St Aidan’s Education Leadership Team’s response has been to partner with the University of Queensland, contributing our support to the university in securing funding for a large-scale project. As a result, an expert inter-disciplinary panel of 16 University of Queensland researchers, under the leadership of Professor Lisa Featherstone, has come together to conduct an in-depth analysis of the petition. Researchers with backgrounds in history, criminology, education, the social sciences, politics, law, and social work, are working together to deliver recommendations to governments and schools about how to better teach young Australians about sexual violence. As the only school currently sitting on the reference group for this project, St Aidan’s role is to ensure the project delivers actionable recommendations for schools to assist them in implementing evidence-based, effective programs. The leadership team look forward to working closely with Professor Featherstone’s team to determine what young people need to know about affirmative consent, and healthy relationships more broadly, and the best ways to get the message across.

For more on the project, see https://stories.uq.edu.au/news/2021/ we-need-to-do-better-for-young-people/index.html