What would it take for relationships and sexuality education to be enacted meaningfully and responsively? Provocations informed by New Zealand policy and teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

This paper explores relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in New Zealand secondary schools. After conducting a nationwide survey of teachers and producing a report on the challenges reported by RSE teachers, we began to develop a paper exploring the perennial issues faced by RSE teachers as they enact curriculum policy. Given that these issues endure, we considered how else we could approach the paper: in particular, what different questions could we ask of our data; and what alternative analytics offer potential for thinking in new ways about the perennial issues, and move us beyond telling the same old story? Asking these questions led us to Bacchi’s What’s the problem represented to be? (approach to policy analysis. Using data from our survey to focus our attention on key issues for teachers, we work with extracts from national government guidance for schools and teachers on RSE to apply this approach. Under five headings developed through the data analysis, we present five ‘provocations’ – or deliberately provocative proposals for the future of RSE in New Zealand. We hope the ideas in this paper may spark different ways of thinking about RSE policy and practice, with the ultimate aim of delivering meaningful and responsive RSE in secondary schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers
• policy
• relationships and sexuality education
• curriculum
• New Zealand

Background

The impetus for this paper arose from a nationwide online survey of secondary¹ school teachers’ experiences teaching relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in New Zealand. After conducting the research and publishing a technical report (Dixon et al. 2022), we began writing a paper exploring the perennial issues faced by teachers of the subject as they enact curriculum policy.

Although a wide range of barriers and issues were reported by the teachers who participated in the survey, writing about those issues fuelled our disquiet about the need to not just report on challenges but propose solutions. After all, the fact that we framed our work as engaging with perennial issues indicates the persistence of on-going concerns for RSE teachers without resolution, or the ability to find new ways of working with curriculum policy to better meet the needs of both teachers and students of the subject. This led us to consider how else we could approach the paper – what different questions could we ask of our data and of ourselves as researchers? What alternative analytics offer potential for thinking in new ways about the perennial issues, and move us beyond telling the same old story? From our perspective, the same old story would be one that spoke to such perennial issues as the existence of unconfident teachers; a lack of time to deliver comprehensive RSE; lack of status for the subject; objections from conservative groups to RSE, and – in turn – young people’s assertions that RSE is not meeting their needs. This story is supported by both national (for example, Allen 2008; Cammock et al. 2023; Dixon 2023; Family Planning 2019) and international evidence (for example, Cumper et al. 2023; Dickson et al. 2023; UNESCO 2018).

The quotation that follows has in the past framed our thinking about not only RSE, but also about health education more broadly. Again, we use this to illustrate the need to think about how we can research (and communicate our research) in a way that makes a difference for RSE as a subject, its teachers and its learners, including moving people’s thinking about RSE into new spaces.

How far has critiquing the inadequacies of sexuality education actually delivered us? (Allen 2018, 3, emphasis in original)

Allen (2018), a feminist new materialist RSE and sexualities researcher from Aotearoa New Zealand, points to the need for scholarship in the area of RSE to paint a new picture of what’s going on, and to re-think the ways in which we (communicate) research in the area, in order to make any difference to the practice and outcomes of the subject in schools. Therefore, in this paper, we use findings from our nationwide survey alongside national guidance for schools and teachers to experiment with Carol Bacchi’s What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR) post-structural approach to policy analysis (Bacchi 2009). This compels us to ask the question – what would it take in a diverse society in which schools have autonomy to design local curriculum, for RSE to be enacted meaningfully and responsively? We propose a range of provocative ideas about possibilities for the future of RSE in New Zealand with the hope of stimulating new ways of thinking about enacting curriculum policy in practice, and the perennial issues that come along for the ride.

Relationships and sexuality education in New Zealand

Relationships and sexuality education (RSE) as education policy work features in school curricula internationally. Evidence-based policy that provides direction for best practice in RSE highlights how it can increase young people’s knowledge, critical thinking, and positive attitudes related to sexual and reproductive health and relationships (UNESCO 2018). Evidence-informed RSE also promotes values that are important to a safe and inclusive society such as respect, non-discrimination, and positive communication (UNESCO 2018).

International evidence advocates that RSE begins in primary school, progresses through the curriculum levels, is strengths-based and inclusive, and is grounded in social justice (Goldfarb and Lieberman 2021; UNESCO 2018). However, the research and evaluation literature from New Zealand generally highlights the inadequacies and inconsistencies present in RSE practice (Classification Office 2020; ERO 2018; Family Planning 2019) and reveals a gap in understanding of teachers’ perspectives of teaching RSE – including barriers and enablers to their practice. In New Zealand, schools are self-governing and are encouraged to design a local curriculum to meet their school community’s needs. A school’s local curriculum is the way in which each school brings the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007) to life in a particular context (Ministry of Education 2019). This inevitably means differential enactment of the national curriculum across schools in the country – which raises questions about what it means for RSE to be consistently taught.

Alongside the way the national curriculum is enacted locally, a number of policy-related factors work in combination to influence teachers’ practice in RSE. For example, teachers of the subject need to have adequate professional training for teaching specialist subject content knowledge, some of which is amongst the most sensitive content knowledge taught in a curriculum. The changing nature of social issues related to RSE (for example, access to sexual and reproductive healthcare) and the changing social and cultural norms associated with these that are embraced by some but not by others in communities (for example, gender identity), means there are constant pressures on teachers and schools to ‘get it right’. When teachers delivering policy-led RSE in schools have to juggle conservative community views on one hand, with calls for more RSE and mandated content to combat big social problems like sexual violence on the other, and then have their practice bought into question by media interests responding to both perspectives, teaching RSE in consideration of current policy can be fraught.

Added to this, a backdrop of social change with new or changing approaches to RSE knowledge and understanding (for example, shifts in gender- and sexuality-related terminology) means that on-going professional learning and development challenges exist for teachers of RSE attempting to stay up-to-date with current knowledge and effective approaches, often in the face of many other completing curriculum and schooling policy changes. Other significant influences on contemporary RSE are high-level policy changes to education priorities such as those instigated in New Zealand in 2023 with the Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP) requiring schools to:

Create a safe and inclusive culture where diversity is valued and all learners and staff, including those who identify as LGBTQIA+, are disabled, have learning support needs, are neurodiverse, or from diverse ethnic communities, feel they belong. (Ministry of Education 2020b, 4)

This has been accompanied with a range of steps being taken to give priority to comprehensive and responsive RSE in both primary and secondary schools (Ministry of Education 2020a).

Policy guidance for schools and teachers in sexuality education in New Zealand was first published in 2002 and was updated in 2015. Amidst a backdrop of cultural and social changes, including the proliferation of social media and young people’s use of digital devices, greater recognition and acceptance of diverse family structures, and changing social and gender norms, the 2015 sexuality education guide was re-developed and published in 2020 as Relationships and Sexuality Education: A guide for teachers, leaders and boards of trustees (Ministry of Education 2020a).

The RSE guide provides guidance around a whole-school approach to RSE, essential for achieving the NELP above. It acknowledges that expectations for RSE go well beyond health education teaching and that a whole-school approach for the promotion of student wellbeing (in general) is an expected outcome contributed to by the implementation of multiple education policies. The guide also suggests how RSE can be linked with learning across the eight levels of the curriculum, provides recommendations for effective pedagogy that responds to diverse learners, and describes the legal obligations surrounding community consultation for health education, as well as parents’ rights to withdraw their children from aspects of RSE.

In 2022, the Ministry of Education published a range of materials that provide tools to support implementation of the RSE guide (Ministry of Education 2022b). The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007) is currently undergoing a ‘refresh’, with the health and physical education learning area (HPE) due to be revised in 2024 (Ministry of Education 2022a). In what has been described as a ‘backwards step’ for RSE (Tyson 2023; McCallum 2023), the newly-formed government in New Zealand announced the following action: ‘Refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines’ (NZ House of Representatives 2023, 8).

In combination with the aforementioned curriculum refresh, the status and content of RSE is by no means certain, and will undoubtedly influence RSE teachers’ practice in the near future.

Theoretical framework and methods

What’s the problem represented to be?

Implicit within policy work is the understanding that policy is designed to enact change to solve social problems. These problems are implied – and the What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR) approach to policy analysis was developed to make these problems explicit (Bacchi 2009), and to closely interrogate them. Within the WPR, the term ‘problem’ refers to change implied in policy (Bacchi 2009). Instead of understanding problems as existing outside of policy, the WPR approach views problems as created within policy: ‘Policies give shape to “problems”; they do not address them’ (Bacchi 2009, x, emphasis in the original). Health education and RSE grapple with teaching and learning material that is often viewed as social problems – for example alcohol and drug use, mental health, and sexual behaviours. Moreover, intersections inevitably exist between the health and education sectors in this curriculum area. Using WPR provides a way of exploring and questioning how these ‘problems’ are shaped and represented in policy (problem representations) – including the assumptions that underpin and shape policy – and the resulting implications for the governance of teachers, learners, and the curriculum subject as a whole.

WPR can be applied to texts that provide ‘guides to conduct’ (Bacchi 2023, 234), an example of which is the RSE guide. Of interest in the WPR approach are the roles of experts and professionals in defining how policy is put to work in societal contexts (Bacchi 2009). In this case, this means how messages from the RSE guide connect to the realities of teachers’ work, the latter as evidenced by findings from our nationwide survey. In applying WPR to the RSE guide as connected to key survey findings, we embark on a project of ‘problem-questioning’ rather than ‘problem-solving’, and ‘digging deeper than usual’ (Bacchi 2009, xix, emphasis in original), which enables proposing new directions for teachers’ policy-related work within RSE.

Therefore, WPR provides a lens with which to problematise the RSE guide (in relation to areas pointed to in the survey data). However, we cannot professionally just let that lie as is – and stop at problem questioning. Fernandez-Balboa (2017), a post-structural researcher in physical education raises the issue of critique in itself not being valuable for teachers nor policy-makers – a trap we want to avoid. In his words: ‘… the incapacity of the critical HPE scholarship, carried out mostly in academic contexts, to translate and interpenetrate the daily realities of schools, and, similarly, to connect with the political, economic and institutional realities of key stakeholders in policy spaces’ (Fernández-Balboa 2017, 659).

WPR analysis

The data collection method that provided the impetus for our WPR analysis was an anonymous self-reported online survey. The survey comprised a combination of questions to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Relevant to this paper are qualitative data collected through three open-ended questions exploring (1) key issues teachers of RSE are grappling with; (2) research and media versus teacher perceptions; (3) anything else you want to tell us. Ethical approval for the research was provided by the University of Canterbury Human Research Ethics Committee, and the survey was open for responses from May to July 2022. The main method of recruitment was through social media, and participants were also recruited via email and newsletter communications. One hundred and ninety-one surveys were completed by secondary teachers across the country (there are 377 secondary schools in New Zealand (Education Counts 2022)). A range of school types were represented across participants. Qualitative survey data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis (Terry and Hayfield 2021).

This thematic analysis of survey data was then used to focus our attention on aspects of the New Zealand Ministry of Education’s RSE guide for the second analytical task – application of the WPR approach. We chose to use the survey data in this way to prioritise what to focus the WPR analysis upon, given the amount of content in the RSE guide, which is a substantial document. Application of the WPR approach involved two of this paper’s authors interrogating the RSE guide in relation to the interrelated WPR analytical questions:

1. What is the ‘problem’ represented to be in a specific policy?

2. What prepositions/assumptions underpin this representation of the ‘problem’ (problem representation)?

3. How has this representation of the ‘problem’ come about?

4. What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the problem be thought about differently?

5. What effects (discursive, subjectification, lived) are produced by this representation of the ‘problem’?

6. How/where has this representation of the ‘problem’ been produced, disseminated and defended? How has it been/can it be disrupted and replaced?

7. Apply this list of questions to your own problem representations (Bacchi 2009, 2; Bacchi and Goodwin 2016, 20).

As noted by Bacchi (2023) this list of questions can sit in the background of an analysis, and might not be addressed sequentially. The final question offers researchers an opportunity to be self-problematic, which offers ‘active engagement with one’s positions through applying the WPR questions to one’s own proposals’ (Bacchi 2023, 223, emphasis in original). WPR has been used in recent times to interrogate educational policy, for example the UK national plan for music education (Bacchi 2023) and school exclusion policies in England and Scotland (Tawell and McCluskey 2022). While Tawell & McCluskey provide a ‘worked example’ of the seven WPR questions (thereby providing a useful methodological example), our analysis more closely follows Bacchi (2023) by organising the findings into themes.

Findings and provocations

Theme-by-theme, below we connect findings from our survey data analysis to relevant messages in the RSE guide and provide analytical thoughts developed through asking of the RSE guide WPR questions 1–5 above, where relevant. We conclude each theme with a provocation – a provocative proposal for the future of RSE in New Zealand – (the latter half of WPR question 6 – how can the problem representation be disrupted and replaced?). Each provocation is supported by reasoning in order to address the question: what would it take in a diverse society within which schools have autonomy to design local curriculum, for RSE to be enacted meaningfully and responsively?

Theme one: consulting with the community about RSE

Communication with parents was discussed in the survey mostly in the context of the legislative requirement to conduct community consultation on the delivery of health education (New Zealand Government 2020). A number of teachers discussed challenges related to community consultation, for example: ‘Doing the community consultation in a way that gives relevant stakeholders a chance to voice their opinions’ and ‘having enough time to organise a community consultation, alongside my school workload is difficult’.

Respondents also noted some potential or real concerns about parent and community opposition to aspects of RSE: ‘Potential parent backlash as a male teacher at a female school’, ‘parents and community concern especially around gender identity debate’. It is also important to note that pushback may also arise from a community wider than that of parents of children at a given school. One participant expressed this as follows:

There is also a minority viewpoint that is being pushed onto people and there is a lot of shaming and bigotry if people don’t follow the agenda or values of this minority. As a result people avoid or don’t do anything rather than being shown up by this group or view point.

The RSE guide provides information about the legislative requirements about consulting with the (parent) community about the delivery of health education (and RSE within it), presenting RSE as a subject needing community consultation to shape its delivery in schools (WPR Q1). Briefly, the Education and Training Act 2020 (New Zealand Government 2020) contains two clauses relating specifically to health education and RSE. First, a parent of a student at a State school may request their child is released from tuition in specified parts of the health curriculum related to sexuality education (section 51). Second, the board of a State school must, at least once every two years, after consulting the school community, adopt a statement on the delivery of the health curriculum (section 91).

A significant focus is placed upon legal requirements and suggested processes to fulfil these – two of the five sections in the RSE guide, in fact. This positions the legal requirements prominently, with an assumption that these are not well understood and/or implemented (WPR Q2). It is likely that this representation of the problematic aspects of consulting with the community has come about through evidence such as the ERO (2018), and through the extensive stakeholder involvement in the development of the RSE guide (WPR Q3).

Across the community consultation sections in the RSE guide is some mention of differing views within the community, but this is not extensively covered, and little concrete guidance is offered about managing these differing views, especially when these are inconsistent with other education and social sector policy such as the Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities (Ministry of Education 2020b) and the Human Rights Act 1993. This is a potential silence in the guide (WPR Q4), and as the comments from our participants above attest to, negotiating divergent perspectives on RSE is a challenging space for schools and teachers to negotiate (WPR Q5).

Provocation (WPR Q6): The requirement to consult with the community on the delivery of health education is removed.

As noted above, the fact that two of five sections of the RSE guide are devoted to community consultation and other legal requirements/connections indicates that this aspect of the Education and Training Act 2020 (New Zealand Government 2020) is either not well understood, is not well implemented, or both. This raises the question, what is the point of the consultation when there is a curriculum expectation RSE will be taught until the end of year 10? Coupled with pushback from some community members and the lack of guidance for dealing with community concerns (which often rise to the surface during the consultation), the consultation can create workload issues and stress for teachers. It is curious that health education is the only curriculum area singled out by the Act as requiring community consultation – what message(s) does this send about the nature and purpose of the subject in comparison with all other subjects in the national curriculum? Given the importance of designing local curriculum (Ministry of Education 2019) across all learning areas of the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007), would it not be more appropriate to require consultation more broadly, without singling out one area therein?

Theme two: inconsistencies in teacher practice

Some survey respondents took the opportunity to share positive teaching practice in their school, but this was often tempered by an accompanying comment about how this very much depended on who was teaching RSE in the school. For example: ‘I’m super passionate and well-read around RSE, my colleagues not so much. They don’t necessarily feel comfortable in this space which creates a barrier for our students’ and ‘the quality of RSE you get at my own school varies enormously depending on the teacher in front of the kid. I can’t even fathom how diverse the range of quality varies from school to school, area to area’. Respondents’ comments connecting to teacher practice often discussed the importance of teacher knowledge, training and confidence when teaching RSE, as the following participant expressed:

Unfortunately some teachers do not feel confident teaching this and some schools just put anyone in front of a class, this needs to be taught by trained passionate teachers with the content knowledge.

Another issue relating to teachers was the acknowledgement that RSE can be a challenging subject to teach, and it can be difficult to keep up with cultural shifts related to RSE content. Specific topics that were raised as being challenging for teachers were gender diversity and pornography. For example: ‘Gender diversity – students identifying as a different gender/pronouns. I have trouble with knowing the right way to teach this’ and ‘teaching of pornography to what age group and how much’. An added layer which likely makes RSE material even more challenging for teachers is possible parent and community concern as identified in theme one above.

The RSE guide provides guidance for enacting RSE in curriculum terms, including key considerations for responsive approaches to RSE for Māori, Pacific, LGBTQIA+, and disabled learners. The provision of guidance for these specific groups of learners demonstrates that it is those groups that are named in and across educational policies as being ‘priority learners’ (ERO 2012), or those for whom barriers need to be dismantled for success at school (Ministry of Education 2020b). The RSE guide thus positions these groups as requiring specific attention when planning and teaching RSE (WPR Q1, Q2, Q3).

Of particular interest, however, are the key learning charts for each of the five curriculum levels in secondary schools – these charts provide suggested learning outcomes, which progress in complexity across the levels. Key content knowledge that is prioritised in the key learning charts (occurring multiple times within and/or across levels) – and thus being viewed as ‘problems’ that RSE can address – includes: consent, relationships and social media/online situations, gender and sexual identities, gender norms, knowledge and skills to enhance wellbeing in relationships, impacts of pornography, inclusive practices.

Issues relating to image-sharing (referred to as ‘sexting’) and accessing pornography are also singled out in the guide as problems for young people (WPR Q1). RSE provides ‘an opportunity to discuss the complexities, issues and impacts’ (Ministry of Education 2020a, 25) of pornography and its use as a default relationships and sexuality educator. The implication here is that RSE is a more effective educational environment within which to explore these issues than leaving young people to their own devices (WPR Q5). Once key learning is identified, gaps and silences are inevitable – i.e. the learning that is missing from the charts (WPR Q4).

Provocation (WPR Q6): Key learning for secondary school-level RSE is mandated – stipulated aspects of RSE learning such as those above must be covered by all schools, with evaluative work undertaken by the Education Review Office to check for compliance.

The notion of learning that is too important to be left to chance has recently framed educational conversations in New Zealand relating to the review of the national qualification (NCEA) and the refresh of the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007); and features in the opening statement of the RSE guide itself (Ministry of Education 2020a). However, the nature of HPE – three combined subjects (health education, physical education and home economics), – means that the extent to which any one key area of learning (of which RSE is one of seven) is covered in any breadth or depth will be inconsistent within and across schools. The provocation above is highly controversial within a context where the curriculum is open-ended and flexible (Ministry of Education 2007), where local curriculum design is an expectation in the current policy climate (Ministry of Education 2019), and where the new direction for the evaluative work of the Education Review Office supports schools to work within their individual context (ERO 2022). Such a suggestion also raises key questions around valued knowledge: if key content is mandated – then which key content is privileged, and what is pushed to the side, or silenced – why, and for whose benefit? These issues notwithstanding, without schools being compelled to cover specific RSE contexts for learning it is inevitable that gaps in coverage – whether those are within or across schools – will remain.

Theme three: the lack of time for, and status of, RSE

While several survey respondents pointed to a supportive environment for RSE, for example, ‘fortunate and appreciative of opportunities provided at this kura [school] — very few barriers at all’, this was a viewpoint that was very much in the minority. Most responses pointed to a lack of senior leadership support and time for RSE. For example: ‘Senior management support and timetabling significantly limits the ability to deliver quality RSE, let alone other important health topics’. One respondent discussed status in relation to the connection between health and physical education: ‘Being attached to PE means that health becomes less important’. Respondents on the whole gave a strong signal that they felt that RSE and health education were under-valued in their schools as compared to other subjects. This notably played out in timetabling decisions and time allocated to teaching the subject. A lack of time was commonly cited as a current issue impacting upon the ability to teach a quality RSE programme, exemplified by the following comment: ‘We get 10 hours a year, sometimes what is taught feels rushed as we are trying to cover so much in such little time. Some things are only touched on’. Respondents also discussed how a lack of allocated time to teach RSE led to sometimes difficult decisions, or questions, about what content to leave in and what to leave out. For example: ‘What is most pressing for the students. e.g. What is a topical issue for them. So much to cover I think it’s important to get a feel for what is important at that time for the students’. Comments relating to time to teach RSE echoed findings from the quantitative survey data that time was the most significant barrier to RSE for the respondents.

The RSE guide includes several statements within its curriculum section that discuss time and timetabling decisions for RSE, which indicates this can be problematic for schools (WPR Q1), evidenced by such reports as ERO (2018) (WPR Q3). First, health education should be timetabled as a stand-alone, compulsory subject in years 9 and 10, health education should be offered as an optional NCEA subject (for senior secondary students), and senior students outside of NCEA should also have opportunities to learn in RSE contexts. Second, RSE can be taught beyond the HPE learning area. Third, balance is needed between the hours allocated to health education and physical education. Fourth, following the ERO (2018), for years 9 and 10, ‘schools with effective RSE programmes spend at least 12–15 hours per year’ (Ministry of Education 2020a, 34).

These statements (peppered across the guide’s curriculum section) imply that RSE has low status and insufficient time allocated to the subject (WPR Q1 & Q2). Readers are continually reminded of the need to provide ample space in the timetable for RSE, either as part of health education (should), or in other curricula spaces (can) (WPR Q4).

Provocation (WPR Q6): A minimum number of hours for teaching RSE is required for all schools, with evaluative work undertaken by the Education Review Office to check for compliance.

Quite simply, if teachers do not have the time to devote to RSE (in amongst the other key areas of learning within health education), then any programme of learning is going to be subject to difficult decisions about what to leave in – and what to leave out. While we might argue that even 12–15 hours per year for RSE is not enough, it is evident from the quantitative data in our survey that the majority of students in years 9 and 10 are not even receiving that. For example, 11 respondents indicated that year 9 students received 0 hours of RSE, with over half of respondents indicating between 0 and 12 hours for year 9 students. Inextricably tied up in discussions of time are those of status. It is likely that the low status of health education in New Zealand schools (Fitzpatrick and Tinning 2014; Hargreaves 2013) is a significant barrier to the provision of time – not only at the junior secondary school, but also at senior secondary school, where NCEA health education may not be offered, and learning opportunities for RSE past year 10 May not exist. We do note that time does not ensure good quality, meaningful, and responsive RSE. However, time does open the door for opportunities for teaching and learning.

Theme four: the need for RSE learning in senior secondary levels

A significant number of survey respondents discussed the problematic nature of RSE learning in the senior levels for the majority of students who do not study health education at senior secondary levels. In New Zealand, health education (like other subjects) is only mandated until the end of year 10 (approximately 15 years old). Beyond that level, health education may be offered in a school, but is an optional subject for students to choose. Acknowledgement was made that the senior level of school was a pertinent time for RSE. For example: ‘I think students are probably more mature and ready to hear the messages in these (senior level) year groups’ and ‘I believe our school has excellent RSE education at Y9 and Y10. But the lack of anything beyond this is sad, as students need to be “ready” and often aren’t at Y10’. Respondents expressed a desire to incorporate RSE at the senior levels, as exemplified by one teacher: ‘I would love to integrate compulsory RSE into our senior year levels so all students have access’. The limitations of one-off presentations at the senior level were also noted: ‘Some students disengage when “compulsory” days or sessions are happening’. Prominent across respondents’ comments was the recognition that teachers wanted to provide more learning opportunities in RSE for senior students, in a way that is cohesive and meaningful for students, rather than one-off sessions.

As noted in theme three above, the RSE guide notes that senior secondary (year 11–13) students outside of NCEA should also have opportunities to learn in RSE contexts. The fact that any subject is optional at this level (WPR Q3) presents the problem that many students are missing out on RSE at this level (WPR Q1), with the associated assumption that those students interested in health education will access this learning (WPR Q2). As in theme two, key learning charts in the RSE guide provide suggested learning outcomes (WPR Q1). A passage further on in the guide provides possibilities for weaving senior secondary RSE into a school’s timetable, for example designing workshops, using study periods to have RSE lessons, offering a peer sexuality support programme, and using outside providers. The guide also states the importance of programmes being planned, delivered, and evaluated by teachers with confidence and skills in RSE (a product of knowing both what and how to teach). This raises questions about teacher resourcing in a school, and connects to issues of status explored in theme three. RSE at the senior secondary level is problematised in terms of lack of student input into programme design (WPR Q1), however mixed messages exist in relation to who might teach RSE at this level (a teacher or outside provider?) and the extent to which the curriculum might frame learning experiences (WPR Q4). This reinforces the importance of RSE at these levels to be taught by a teacher who is familiar with the curriculum, rather than ‘one-off’ and ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches to RSE.

Provocation (WPR Q6): Schools are required to include teacher-led RSE with significant learner input in the senior secondary levels of schooling (years 11–13), with evaluative work undertaken by the Education Review Office to check for compliance.

The provocation here in many ways echoes the RSE guide’s messages, as noted above. Central importance is placed on both the role of the teacher and the role of the learners in determining learning needs, planning for learning and teaching, and evaluating its impact. Alongside the Education Review Office (ERO 2018), our survey participants and young people in New Zealand voice the view that further opportunities for learning in RSE contexts are needed in the later schooling years (for example Gordon 2022; Hawkins-Boulton 2023).

One of the Education Review Office’s recommendations from their most recent national evaluation of sexuality education was to ensure ‘that students at all levels have opportunities to engage with sexuality education’ (2018, p. 20). Young people’s voices centre upon issues of sexual violence and consent education (Hawkins-Boulton 2023), sexual harassment (Gordon 2022), safer sex practices (Family Planning 2019) and coverage of diverse gender and sexuality identities (Ellis and Bentham 2021). It is notable that only three of the Education Review Office’s (ERO 2018) 13 narratives of good practice in RSE mention RSE learning at the senior secondary levels, with no narrative focusing on practice in this area. Examples of case studies would support teachers and schools to be better equipped to embed RSE into the later years of schooling.

Theme five: inconsistencies in teacher capacity for teaching RSE

Survey participants discussed that teachers needed access to on-going and regular professional learning and development (PLD) on RSE. For example, PLD for ‘keeping up with rapid changes and resources that are appealing, relevant and appropriate for students’. PLD was viewed as particularly important given the sensitivities and complexities involved in teaching RSE: ‘The resourcing and PLD available can help break down this subject which can understandably be difficult for some people to teach’. Respondents’ remarks about accessing PLD tended to converge with issues of time and senior leadership support to access PLD, with respondents most often reporting that lack of time and support was a barrier to accessing PLD. The role, and use, of external providers in RSE was also discussed by a number of respondents. For example: ‘(I don’t want) outside providers delivering content when I can teach exactly what they are and have more respect from pupils’. Whether or not students prefer to be taught by external providers is debatable and dependent on context (Dixon 2020; ERO 2018). However, teachers on the whole indicated that they see value in using external expertise to support their RSE programmes, rather than to teach the content.

The RSE guide positions a whole-school approach to RSE as best practice (WPR Q1), with the under-pinning assumption being that multiple members of the school community need to work in unison (WPR Q2). Alongside school ethos and environment, and community connections, is curriculum teaching and learning (Ministry of Education 2020a). These three elements, in combination, are connected to teacher capacity. For example, school leadership decisions about teacher appointments and access to PLD, and the connections teachers have to their professional associations and external supports for RSE, can both significantly influence teacher capacity and confidence in RSE and produce different effects in different circumstances (WPR Q5). However, it is within curriculum teaching and learning that the RSE guide makes statements about teacher practice, indicating these areas as problem representations (WPR Q1). In a section on use of external providers, it is noted that ‘health education teachers are the experts in terms of pedagogies and the needs of their ākonga [learners]’ (Ministry of Education 2020a, 40). Further passages reiterate the importance of the elements of effective pedagogy in the New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education 2007), discuss the need for teachers to access regular PLD – both in terms of being comfortable with RSE and being up-to-date with good practice, and the importance of assessment for learning.

These representations of the ‘problem’ of teacher capacity in RSE have come about through mechanisms such as a lack of teacher education and training in health education (WPR Q3), which connect to inconsistencies in teacher practice (theme two above). What is missing in the RSE guide is a more in-depth discussion of effective teaching practice specifically as related to RSE, as well as stronger statements, perhaps, about the attributes, skills, and practices of an effective teacher of RSE (WPR Q4).

Provocation (WPR Q6): Specialist RSE leaders with recognised qualifications, certification, and training should lead learning in – and teach – the subject in secondary schools.

A perennial issue for both pre-service teachers and in-service teachers is a lack of time to develop capability in their area of expertise, as noted by the participants in our survey. This can lead schools to out-source aspects of the curriculum to external providers – and this is indeed common practice within HPE (Powell 2019). However, this is not advocated as best practice (New Zealand Health Education Association 2018; Ministry of Education 2020a).

Coupled with this is the question of who teaches health education in a school (explored in theme one) when teachers may lack interest, expertise, and training in RSE altogether. A specialist RSE teacher would have advanced knowledge in terms of content, pedagogy, and current issues in RSE. They would act as a leader of learning and PLD facilitator to upskill health education teachers in their school. They would also have a teaching load – whether that be solely RSE, or health education more broadly. They would connect with other RSE specialists in their community and across New Zealand, and they would engage in on-going PLD for themselves.

One model for this is the Specialist Classroom Teacher position, which has been in place since 2006 in New Zealand secondary schools. The aim of the role is to enhance quality teaching through supporting the professional growth of other teachers in the school (Post Primary Teachers’ Association 2012). It would be interesting to see whether a role such as this could be translated into a specific curriculum focus such as RSE, and given the complexities of RSE and the noted challenges to current practice, this would be a worthwhile endeavour to initiate.

Closing thoughts

In this paper, we have used data from a nationwide survey to focus our attention on key aspects of the New Zealand Ministry of Education RSE guide to analyse using WPR (Bacchi 2009). WPR has in turn provided a springboard to another level of discussion; our provocations about possible ways for thinking differently about RSE.

As noted earlier, we are cognisant of a legacy of critique without material changes to practice in the field of RSE (Allen 2018) and health and physical education more broadly (Fernandez-Balboa 2017). Therefore, WPR offered an approach to policy analysis that enabled us to come at the issues relating to RSE in a different way. Bacchi (2023) states that ‘WPR is not associated with making prescriptions for ways forward … it embraces a lack of finality. It insists on the need to continue questioning proposals of all forms, including our own’ (p. 239). This connects to our formation of provocations above – ideas that unsettle us. As noted by Taswell & McCluskey (2022), who examined the methodological merit of WPR for analysis of educational policy, WPR offers a new and effective way to point to imbalances and gaps in policy, whilst building in reflexivity to the process; something with which we concur.

To close we return to the question we posed in the background section of this paper in order to consider the extent to which our findings and analysis above have enabled us to find even a partial answer. In doing so, we mobilise WPR Q7 – being reflexive and self-problematic about our very provocations and what they might come to mean or produce. The question is, what would it take in a diverse society within which schools have autonomy to design local curriculum, for RSE to be enacted meaningfully and responsively?

Our provocations, if mobilised, could work in combination to support a meaningful and responsive enactment of RSE. The removal of community consultation (provocation one) would mean that the mandating of key RSE content (provocation two) can be put to work in schools, and not run the risk of being subjected to removal due to community concerns. This key content will be supported by more time for RSE (provocation three) including at the senior secondary level of schooling (provocation four). In turn, provocations two, three, and four would be supported by a specialist RSE teacher (provocation five), which would create conditions of possibility for RSE that is meaningful and responsive to learners’ needs.

Each of these provocations is worthwhile to consider – either in isolation or in combination – in relation to the impact they could have on RSE practice, and ultimately the young people whose learning experiences are at its core. They do, however, raise a number of questions. What intended, or unintended, effects could result? What do we open the door to when we mandate time or content for curriculum matters? How might the ideas call into question, and redefine, the role of the teacher, not to mention the autonomy of schools to design local curriculum? What investment would be needed to implement these ideas, particularly the notion of RSE specialist teachers? In reality the provocations are likely too provocative (for want of a better word) to ever see the light of day, and as a group of researchers and teachers in the RSE space we ourselves do not agree with all that we have proposed.

But these ideas are worth thinking about, as are other provocations in the New Zealand context, or elsewhere in the world. If we reject these ideas as being unworkable or undesirable, we may still need to think about alternative mechanisms for enacting RSE policy into practice, given that current provision is not doing justice to the subject and its learners. Our hope is that the ideas in this paper may spark different ways of thinking about policy and practice, and perhaps plant the seeds for others to propose provocations in their own contexts so we can continue this conversation – about RSE, about other aspects of health education, about HPE, or about the curriculum more broadly.

Data availability

The technical report on which this paper is based can be accessed at: https://sexualwellbeing.org.nz/media/305050/teachers-rse-survey-2022.pdf.

Acknowledgments

We thank the teachers who responded to our survey, and the reviewers for critically reading the manuscript and suggesting improvements.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by funding from Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (formerly Family Planning New Zealand) and the New Zealand Health Education Association.

Notes

1. Secondary schools provide years 9–13 of schooling in New Zealand (primary school encompasses years 1–8), with the point of entry into year 9 usually being around 13 years of age.