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It very nearly happened in 2010
Getting leading bodies on board
Although economic wellbeing and careers is not yet statutory in entirety, elements of this strand (e.g. online gambling) are threaded throughout the statutory guidance. Compulsory content will therefore account for about 80% of the PSHE education curriculum so this is a huge step towards better PSHE for all.
But how did we get here? And what were the many challenges along the way?
Well, it’s a complicated story — and not one we can do full justice to here — but we wanted to give a brief history. There are too many ‘PSHE heroes’ to mention here that have campaigned and battled for better PSHE, both nationally and in schools across the country, but anyone involved should know the importance of your role in getting where we are today.
Statutory PSHE education was announced by the then Labour government in 2008 followed by a review into how to implement it, but the 2010 general election was imminent before legislation came before Parliament.
This meant that it was subject to ‘wash-up’ negotiations between Government and Opposition to pass outstanding legislation before Parliament was dissolved. These negotiations hit a number of snags, and the plans to make PSHE statutory fell through.
PSHE education wasn’t high on the agenda for the new Government though there were still pockets of support across all parties. There was a lot of work to ensure proper cross-party engagement with the issue but we had something to build on.
PSHE education is a broad subject and we knew there was widespread support across various sectors for education that supported health, relationships, wellbeing and readiness to make the most of the modern world. We decided to harness this support by getting over 100 leading organisations to pledge support for statutory PSHE.
This included two royal societies, five leading education unions, six royal medical colleges, the NSPCC, Barnardo’s, Stonewall, Google, the British Red Cross, the Children’s Society, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the Association for Chairs of Safeguarding Children Boards, the Children’s Commissioner, the Chief Medical Officer, Public Health England, the Faculty of Public and the national police lead for child protection, Chief Constable Simon Bailey.
Justine Greening said on her appointment as Education Secretary that relationships and sex education (RSE) was ‘top of her in-tray’, so we knew the message was cutting through. In March 2017 she announced the Government’s intention to make RSE statutory through the Children and Social Work Bill (‘Relationships Education’ in primary) and to consider the status of PSHE more broadly. This was our first major win and a historic step following years of campaigning by us and others in the sector.
We were concerned however that the DfE seemed to be concerned with RSE but not the broader subject. Our campaigning therefore switched to making the case for broader PSHE from the perspective that children need health education and economic wellbeing too, and RSE itself would suffer if taught in isolation.
In January 2018 we had yet another secretary of state to convince with Damian Hinds taking over at the DfE.
At this stage our work with a group of policy/public affairs specialists from major organisations and unions covering the breadth of PSHE, from health to economic wellbeing, was key.
This group’s main activity was to make sure statutory status extended beyond RSE, and was represented by
Our activities include an influential joint report on how making PSHE statutory was the most effective and efficient option for schools, considering DfE concerns over workload. We also organised a joint letter to The Times as well as a backbench business debate in Parliament.
Our campaign messaging stressed the need for PSHE education to be compulsory and taught:
Final statutory guidance was published in March 2019 and regulations overwhelmingly passed in the Commons in March 2019. With 538 ‘Ayes’ and only 21 ‘Noes’ the strength of consensus that we and many others had achieved on a sometimes contentious issue was overwhelming. Soon after the regulations passed through the Lords.
A major milestone achieved after many years’ hard work, and the beginning of the next chapter in the journey towards better PSHE education for all...