Embed Respectful Relationship education in all Tasmanian Government schools
Responsible government
- Tasmania
Fourth Action Plan actions
- Primary prevention is key
- 5 Promote healthy and safe relationships and build gender equitable values through initiatives for children and young people.
What are we doing?
This action supports ongoing delivery to embed Respectful Relationships education which supports students to build healthy, respectful and equal relationships and address the attitudes and behaviours that lead to family violence. The Respectful Relationships Education Package includes an extensive range of resources to support schools, communities and individuals to understand why family violence occurs and how to create a culture that promotes respectful relationships for everyone.
Whole-of-school approaches to respectful relationships education will be embedded through a broad range of policies and practices, teaching and learning resources, and in everyday interactions.
- Embed Respectful Relationship education in all Tasmanian Government schools is an action under Safe Homes, Families, Communities: Tasmania’s action plan for family and sexual violence 2019-2022 (Safe Homes, Families, Communities), which invests $26 million over three years from 2019-20 to 2021-22 to prevent and respond to family and sexual violence in Tasmania.
What have we achieved so far?
Safe Homes, Families, Communities commenced implementation on 1 July 2019. Respectful Relationships is an ongoing initiative that commenced under the previous action plan, Safe Homes, Safe Families: Tasmania’s Family Violence Action Plan 2015-2020.
The Tasmanian Government continues to support ongoing delivery of Respectful Relationship education in all Tasmanian Government schools.
The Department of Education (DoE) has updated the Respectful Relationships Education online professional learning suite and public-facing website, which includes content for parents. Updated resources and website went live in February 2021.
The Department is also collaborating with the non-government sector to support respectful relationships education in non-government schools, including hosting open workshops on embedding Respectful Relationships Education.
In 2021, the Department developed a new protective behaviours and personal safety education suite of resources. The resources will assist children and young people identify early warning signs and provide strategies around protecting themselves if they start to experience these.
The online platform for students and online professional learning suite for staff launched in September 2021 and will become part of the broader package of materials on healthy, safe and respectful relationships.
What is next?
Key milestone:
- Ongoing delivery of Respectful Relationship education in all Tasmanian Government schools.
What difference will we make?
The Tasmanian Government is committed to strengthening efforts to change the attitudes, behaviours and power imbalances that lead to violence; and to working with communities to drive generational change.
Embedding Respectful Relationship education in all Tasmanian Government schools further assists Tasmanian Government primary prevention efforts in changing the attitudes and behaviours that lead to violence against women and their children.
The intended outcomes of this action are:
- Enable school communities to build respectful, safe and inclusive learning environments;
- Support long-term attitudinal change to family and gender-based violence in the broader school community by ensuring student engagement in respectful relationships education; and
- Improve wellbeing and learning outcomes by equipping young people with lifelong skills to develop and maintain healthy and respectful relationships.