New 2026 RSHE guidance: Supporting Secondary Schools

The new statutory RSHE guidance is now in force, bringing some important changes to what young people should learn about relationships, safety and the pressures they face.

For secondary schools, there is a stronger focus on issues including misogyny, sexual harassment, exploitation, grooming, harmful online influences and healthy relationships.

These can be difficult subjects to bring to life in the classroom. Young people need more than definitions. They need opportunities to recognise what these issues can look like, explore different perspectives and think about what they could do when faced with them.

That's where Loudmouth's theatre in education programmes can help.

Calling It Out: misogyny, harassment and positive relationships

The new guidance is clear that schools should address misogyny and its connection with violence against women and girls:

“Pupils should understand the importance of challenging harmful beliefs and attitudes and should understand the links between sexism and misogyny and violence against women and girls.”

It also gives schools an important steer about how to approach these conversations:

“Where misogynistic ideas are expressed at school, staff should challenge the ideas, rather than the person expressing them.”

Calling It Out helps schools put this into practice.

Through drama, discussion and interactive activities, young people explore misogyny, sexual harassment and harmful attitudes within relationships and peer groups. They can examine behaviours from a safe distance, question why they happen and consider how they could respond.

Importantly, the programme isn't about blaming boys. This reflects another important principle within the new guidance, which says teachers should avoid language that “stigmatises boys or suggests that boys or men are always perpetrators.”

Instead, Calling It Out encourages all young people to recognise harmful attitudes and behaviours, make positive choices and develop the confidence to safely challenge them.

Working for Marcus: grooming and exploitation

The new guidance also strengthens the focus on helping young people understand exploitation. It specifically says secondary pupils should learn about:

“The concepts and laws relating to harms which are exploitative, including sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation and abuse, grooming, and financial exploitation.”

It goes further by saying pupils should understand:

“The risks and signs that they may be at risk of grooming or exploitation, and how to seek help where there is a concern.”

This is at the heart of Working for Marcus.

Through the story, young people see how grooming and exploitation can develop. Rather than presenting exploitation as something obvious that a young person would simply choose to avoid, the drama allows pupils to see how trust, friendship, rewards, pressure and manipulation can gradually change a relationship.

Pupils explore the warning signs, consider what might make someone more vulnerable to exploitation and learn how and where they can get help for themselves or someone else.

This makes the guidance tangible. Grooming, coercion and exploitation stop being abstract terms and become behaviours young people can learn to recognise.

Making RSHE feel real

One of the challenges of RSHE is moving from knowing something to being able to use that knowledge in real life.

Drama gives young people the opportunity to see situations unfold, question characters, discuss choices and consider what they might do differently.

Calling It Out and Working for Marcus can help schools bring some of the new RSHE guidance's most challenging areas to life, giving young people the knowledge, language and confidence to recognise harmful situations, make positive choices and know when and where to seek help.

To find out more about using these programmes in your RSHE this academic year, contact us on 0121 446 4880 or email enquiry@loudmouth.co.uk