Consultation now open on draft relationships and sexuality education framework

Consultation now open

Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga | Ministry of Education is seeking feedback on a new draft relationships and sexuality education (RSE) framework. The framework will become part of the refreshed compulsory health and physical education learning curriculum available from 2026. RSE aims to equip school students with knowledge and confidence in topics like puberty and sexual health, healthy relationships, sexuality, and safety.

Consultation on the draft is now open with feedback due 9 May 2025.

Once the consultation closes, feedback will be consolidated into key actions and incorporated into the design of the health and physical education learning area. The updated learning area will be released for consultation in Term 4, 2025.

The draft framework can be found here.

Submit your feedback via the Ministry’s online Survey Monkey form. You’ll be asked three key questions covering age appropriateness of the content, if you think any topics are missing, and if you think any topics need to be removed.

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Key elements of the draft framework

The framework outlines proposed teaching that will be covered in RSE from Year 0 to 13.

Education Minister Erica Stanford said in a Government press release:

“Parents deserve certainty and clarity on what their children are learning, when and how in RSE at school so they can make informed decisions about their education… It aims to ensure the content is age-appropriate, evidence-informed, and detailed about what is taught and when.”

Some elements covered in the framework include:

• Years 1-4 - naming body parts, respect and friendships, bullying, digital devices, navigating feelings, and safety.
• Years 5-8 - puberty, conception basics, online risks, some stereotype discussions, different kinds of families and relationships (including first mentions of LGB relationships).
• Years 9-11 - sexual relationships, alcohol and drugs, sexual violence, contraception and STIs, online behaviour, consent, and communication.
• Years 12-13 - nuanced and complex consent scenarios, interpersonal problems, contraception, reproductive health conditions.

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The 2020 RSE guidelines and Education Review Office review

The previous non-compulsory 2020 guidelines offered guidance for teaching different age groups about consensual relationships, online bullying, sexualities, gender diversity, and pornography, but were scrapped last June under the National and New Zealand First coalition deal. Schools were instructed to use the 2007 curriculum in the interim.

The 2020 guidelines can be found here:

• Relationships and sexuality education: a guide for teachers, leaders and Boards of Trustees. Years 1-8
• Relationships and sexuality education: a guide for teachers, leaders and Boards of Trustees. Years 9-13

‍Fiona McNamara, Director - Health Promotion at Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa, said that the 2020 guidelines were “age appropriate, evidence-informed, best practice guidance and it's really disappointing to see that it's disappeared before there's any new guidance issued.”

Last year the Education Review Office (ERO) reviewed the delivery of existing RSE guidelines and curriculum across the country and found significant inconsistencies between schools.

The Education Review Office’s 2024 review of RSE found:

• While RSE is widely supported, students, parents, and whānau have mixed views on when and how much RSE is taught, and whether the curriculum meets their expectations
• What students learn depends on where they go to school, as no RSE content is compulsory
• Recent school leavers report that there were significant gaps in their RSE learning – including 82% of students who didn’t learn and would like to have learned about consent
• Schools face significant challenges in consulting on what to teach in RSE, particularly rural schools and schools with a high Māori roll
• Most, but not all teachers have the capability they need to teach RSE and many find it stressful.

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Reception of the new proposed framework

Unlike the 2020 guidelines, the new proposed framework has several notable omissions including references to gender diversity, pornography, and te ao Māori.

InsideOUT managing director Tabby Besley told 1News the LGBTQIA+ education and support organisation is “incredibly disappointed” there was no mention of gender diversity in the draft:

‍“We think that's incredibly harmful for trans young people who deserve to see themselves reflected in the curriculum.”

InsideOUT has created a submission guide to support responses to the consultation, which can be found here.

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Shaun Robinson, chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand, stressed the importance of RSE to support inclusive social environments at school:

“Without adequate guidance, kaiako and school leadership may lack crucial advice on how to create positive environments in which bullying, discrimination and social exclusion can’t thrive – especially for rainbow and takatāpui tauira,” he said. “Removing the guidelines sends a harmful message to rainbow staff and tauira that they don’t deserve to be safe at school or work.”

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Te Riu Roa | New Zealand Education Institute president Ripeka Lessels said the short window for consultation was “unacceptable”:

“For a learning area that contains vital and incredibly important information for ākonga, it is vital that educators and whānau have adequate opportunity to provide feedback… It is unacceptable to have such late notice for consultation.”

She also stressed the importance of access to “culturally appropriate non-judgemental information” and schools maintaining “sufficient flexibility to teach to the needs of their communities, and instead have to follow narrower, year-by-year content based solely on the chronological age of students.”

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University of Canterbury adjunct professor Dr Tracy Clelland said the scope of the framework was too narrow for helping students navigate relationships:

“We need to talk about risk and that's crucial, but we also need to talk about the joy of sexuality so that in the future, young people have a positive sense of themselves, their bodies and that power to say this relationship is healthy or not healthy.”

She also questioned whether students were interviewed as part of the Ministry’s development process.

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Key research

The following research highlights discussion and evidence that may be useful when writing submissions.

Dixon et. al. examined common issues delivering RSE in their 2023 article, What would it take for relationships and sexuality education to be enacted meaningfully and responsively? Provocations informed by New Zealand policy and teachers’ perspectives. This groups teacher survey responses and asks policy questions under five themes: community consultation, teacher practice inconsistencies, lack of time and status for RSE, senior secondary education, and teacher capacity inconsistencies.

In 2015, the Education Review Office evaluated how well schools promoted and supported student wellbeing through sexuality education. It noted that pornography is recognised internationally as an increasingly accepted and prevalent aspect of young people’s sexuality experiences. It then highlighted concerns that pornography was one of the least well covered aspects of RSE in the curriculum pre-2020.

The Classifications Office released a report ‘Growing up with porn: insights from young New Zealanders’. It provides an in-depth understanding of young people’s experiences with porn and the impact this may have on relationships. It found that young people want information about porn to be part of sexuality education in schools as they believe education is the best way to deal with the potential negative impacts of porn.

A report from Waikato Queer Youth and Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura makes recommendations on teaching Rainbow-inclusive RSE. It emphasises that RSE must include discussion of diverse Rainbow identities and relationships. This should include a safe and welcoming teaching environment with wrap-around support for Rainbow young people, with discussions of consent, peer pressure, and healthy relationships in a Rainbow-specific context.

Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (formerly Family Planning) released a 2022 report on New Zealand secondary school teachers’ perspectives on teaching Relationships and Sexuality Education. It found teachers lack time, access to professional development, senior support, ‘status’ for RSE as a subject, and whole-of-school consistency when delivering RSE. Many teachers commented that most senior students do not study health at NCEA level and do not have meaningful RSE.

A research article by Fitzpatrick et. al. (2021): Relationships and sexuality education: Key research informing New Zealand curriculum policy summarises key thinking and research that informed the 2020 RSE guidance. It justifies the framework based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Indigenous knowledges and human rights, attention to issues of bullying and inclusion, and the responsibility of schools to address gender and sexual diversity. It stresses the importance of including mātauranga Māori in RSE:

“Research in Māori education is clear that Māori students are more successful at school when ‘being Māori’ is affirmed and Māori epistemologies and practices are visible and embedded in the work undertaken.”

Fitzpatrick et al. (2021) also summarises key points of a research article by Le Grice and Braun (2018): Indigenous (Māori) sexual health psychologies in New Zealand: delivering culturally congruent sexuality education - [abstract only]. This article was central to the development of the 2020 guidelines. It maps Māori sexual health psychologies with mātauranga Māori to demonstrate that ‘school-based sexuality education holds potential [for] decolonising notions of Māori sexuality, relationships and reproduction’. It similarly suggests that schools explore whakapapa and pūrākau, discuss contemporary issues using kaupapa Māori, and learn about the history of the word takatāpui.

An article by Cammock et. al. (2023) examines Pacific high school students’ experiences of sexual and reproductive health education in Aotearoa New Zealand. It explores how efforts to deliver culturally appropriate sexuality education to Pacific youth are hindered by lack of resources, and cultural sensitivities and taboos. It discusses lack of tailored RSE in school settings, the concept of sex before marriage, home discussions of RSE, the need for connection with peers and educators, and pornography and social media use.