Relationships and sex education (RSE) could soon be mandatory for all students up to the age of 18. As it stands, RSE currently stops at age 16, which, campaigners say, is the age at which children become most vulnerable. To raise awareness of the issue, campaign groups Make It Mandatory and Killed Women have created The RSE Unofficial Curriculum, a mock textbook exposing the dangerous message that can fill the void when formal sex education ends.
Content note: this article references domestic abuse, coercive control and femicide that readers may find upsetting.
“As a mother you just want to protect your child,” says Carole Gould, whose 17-year-old daughter, Ellie, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend the day after she ended their relationship in 2019. “The coercive control my daughter experienced in her first relationship was so subtle we all failed to recognise the red flags and the danger she was in.” Carole co-founded Killed Women, a campaigning organisation and network for bereaved families whose daughters, mothers, sisters or other relatives have been killed by men. Together with Make It Mandatory, a youth-led campaign group, Killed Women is calling for relationships and sex education (RSE) to be compulsory in schools in England and Wales up to the age of 18 to prevent more young women and girls suffering abuse at the hands of their partners.
The campaign groups are calling on MPs to back Alistair Strathern’s bill to extend compulsory RSE up to age 18 ahead of its second reading on 4 December 2026. To raise awareness of the bill, campaigners have launched The Unofficial Curriculum – a mock textbook revealing what harmful content can fill the void when compulsory RSE ends at 16, including violent pornography and online misinformation to messages normalising coercive control and abuse.
Credit: Matt Alexander /Assignments/the Press Association
It’s estimated that 3.8 million people aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse in the UK last year, with 16–19-year-olds experiencing the highest rates of domestic abuse of any age group.
“When I was 16, I entered my first romantic relationship, as most teenagers do,” says Faustine Petron, founder of Make It Mandatory. “I was excited for this new stage of my life, but that excitement soon wore away as the relationship became controlling and, eventually, violent. For the first year, I didn’t call it abuse because I didn’t have the words for it. No teacher had ever given them to me, and at that age it was hard to tell the difference between love and control.”
Faustine tells Stylist, “As someone who survived an abusive and violent relationship I know how hard it is to rebuild your life at such a young age, we owe the children of this country so much more. 16-19 year olds face the highest rates of domestic abuse of any age group in this country, how does it make sense that this education arbitrarily ends at 16?
Campaigners like Faustine argue that the lack of formal sex education for over-16s creates an ‘education gap’, wherein young people learn about consent, relationships and abuse through algorithms, influencers, and pornography – leaving them vulnerable to the so-called manosphere, incel culture and online radicalisation.
Credit: Matt Alexander /Assignments/the Press Association
Ebony Keeley, a reproductive coercion campaigner, says: “Young people deserve to understand consent, autonomy and coercion before they are faced with situations where those things are being taken away from them. If we do not give them that knowledge, we leave a space for pornography, social media and misinformation to shape their understanding instead.”
You can support the campaign to make RSE mandatory for every young person aged 16–18 by writing to your MP here.
Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse helpline offers free, confidential support 24/7 on 0808 2000 247.
Images: Matt Alexander /Assignments/the Press Association