Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) has become a battleground for the most contested area of education policy. Across many countries, debates about what should be taught, when and how have intensified. At the centre of these debates lie competing claims about how to best keep children and young people safe, how to support their development and what it means to uphold their rights.
On one side of the argument are concerns about age appropriateness, parental authority and the values embedded within educational materials. Critics sometimes argue that RSE exposes young people to ideas or information before they are ready, or that it promotes particular ideological positions about gender, sexuality or family life. In many contexts, these concerns are tied to broader conservative critiques of cultural change. On the other side are perspectives grounded in young people’s rights to information, participation and protection. Advocates of comprehensive RSE emphasise that education about relationships, bodies and sexuality can help young people avoid harm, recognise abuse, build healthy relationships and understand themselves and others. These arguments often draw on the framework of children’s rights articulated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and more recently, United Nations General Comment No. 25 (2021) on children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, which emphasises young people’s rights to protection, provision and participation, including in online spaces.
Both sides tend to frame their position in high-stakes moral terms. Each believes that the wellbeing of children is at stake. Each believes that it holds the ethical high ground. As a result, we see a policy landscape shaped by confrontation, whereby RSE is frequently framed as a contest between opposing camps: progressive versus conservative, protection versus morality, rights versus values. Comprehensive RSE is sometimes presented as a victory for one side of this divide, leaving others feeling that their beliefs have been marginalised or dismissed. In England, RSE guidance tries to skate the thin line between both camps, leaving neither side fulfilled and, ultimately, creating the worse of possible worlds.
For educators, this can be an extremely difficult environment in which to work. Teachers are asked to put their own doubts aside as they navigate sensitive topics in classrooms where students, families and communities may hold very different beliefs about relationships, sexuality and morality. It is therefore unsurprising that many practitioners feel caught between competing expectations.
We put forward ‘Safe Uncertainty’ as a solution to the quagmire. It offers a framework to help educators make space for and navigate contested topics in the classroom. We have designed the Reimagining RSE initiative as a way of developing and applying Safe Uncertainty, with the aim of bridging the divides. We start from the common ground that, at the end of the day, we all want to keep children and young people safe; we just have different ideas about what this looks like and how best to achieve that end.
Safe Uncertainty, as a concept, originates in systemic family therapy, and has since been adopted within social work to help practitioners reconceptualise and navigate risk. Safe uncertainty was developed as a stance in which practitioners remain curious and reflexive while maintaining a clear ethical framework for dialogue (Mason, 1993). Practitioners adopt what Mason called authoritative doubt: a willingness to question one’s assumptions while still holding responsibility for the safety of the interaction. Applied to RSE, Safe Uncertainty shifts the purpose of the classroom. Instead of aiming to ensure that all students leave the room holding a particular set of beliefs or having just absorbed the intended knowledge, the aim becomes helping young people develop the capacities needed to navigate a pluralistic social world. Importantly, the aim is not ‘debate’ in the adversarial sense. Culture-war dynamics often turn classroom conversations into contests in which one side must win, and another must lose. Safe Uncertainty replaces this with dialogue oriented toward curiosity and understanding.
Safe Uncertainty recognises that young people grow up within multiple ecologies of influence: families, faith communities, peer cultures, digital media, schools and wider social narratives. Each of these contexts may offer different interpretations of relationships, sexuality and identity, and education cannot erase this plurality. Nor can it realistically replace it with a single authoritative perspective. In response, Safe Uncertainty reframes the task of RSE. Rather than positioning the classroom as a place where the ‘correct’ answers about relationships or sexuality are transmitted, educators focus on building young people’s relational and ethical literacy. Students are encouraged to examine their assumptions, practice the ability to hold contradictory feelings, and recognise the perspectives of others, all as a means to reflect on the conditions that shape experiences of health, harm, intimacy and responsibility.
This approach resonates with sociological work on ‘sexual projects’, described as the ways individuals interpret and pursue the meanings of intimacy within broader cultural and relational contexts (Hirsch & Kahn, 2020). These projects are underpinned by and influenced by personal, cultural and peer values, and can range from wanting to build intimacy, to please your partner, to pursue sexual accomplishment for ‘lad points’ or to wait for marriage before being intimate. While education cannot predetermine these projects, it can equip young people with the space to reflect and offer them tools to navigate their intimate lives ethically and with self-awareness.
Safe Uncertainty demands a degree of humility from adults. As adults we need to admit that we do not have all the answers. A lot of adults in authority worry that admitting infallibility will shatter the illusion of power and, therefore, that not having the answers is something to fear and be avoided at all costs. However, the shift to authoritative doubt can be liberating. It requires acknowledging that education cannot fully determine how young people will interpret their relational lives. But it also opens a powerful possibility: classrooms can become spaces where students learn how to engage with difference thoughtfully and responsibly.
At this point, some readers may reasonably raise a concern: does emphasising plurality risk weakening moral clarity around harm? If the classroom becomes a space where different perspectives are explored, might this blur the distinction between views that deserve consideration and those that cause harm?
We understand this concern and agree that safeguarding, consent education and violence prevention require clear ethical boundaries. However, Safe Uncertainty does not imply moral relativism. The ‘safe’ element is central. Educational discussions following a Safe Uncertainty approach remain grounded in principles such as mutual respect, rights, wellbeing and responsibility. Harmful behaviours – coercion, abuse or exploitation – are not treated as merely competing viewpoints.
Instead, what Safe Uncertainty questions is the assumption that ethical understanding emerges simply from transmitting the correct rule. Young people often encounter complex relational situations in which rules alone do not resolve uncertainty. There is, in turn, a need to create space to unpack why, for instance, people may harm or treat poorly those they claim to care for. It asks questions like, why do we often frame jealousy as desirous and coercion or controlling behaviour as signs of care rather than as manifestations of a lack of tools for emotional management? In this way, developing the capacity to recognise harm, negotiate boundaries and respond ethically requires reflection as well as instruction.
We see this in education about the legal age of consent. While it is important to know the law, this knowledge will not necessarily help an individual decide if they are ready for intimacy, mitigate any pressures that they may experience or help them to recognise and separate their own wants from the expectations of others. Likewise, being taught models of affirmative consent – that only a clear, articulated ‘yes’ counts as consent, while anything else should be taken as a ‘no’ – can sound empowering, but once again, fails to acknowledge or make space for nuance. Such nuance includes the times that individuals may feel confused and ambivalent, where they may feel deeply for their partner and desire intimacy, yet still feel equally hesitant and unready. To explore why someone may say yes, even when they truly feel no, is emblematic of Safe Uncertainty. It offers an alternative to consent education that – in the pursuit of clarity to keep young people safe – binarises ‘yes’ and ‘no’, while leaving little space for uncertainty. In practice, life takes place in the messy grey. Emotions and behaviour are contradictory and sex is – perhaps should be – messy. As such, we do young people a disservice and leave them ill-prepared if we pretend otherwise.
Another concern might come from those who advocate strongly for young people’s rights to comprehensive sexuality education. They may worry that acknowledging competing perspectives risks treating fundamental rights – such as access to accurate information about sexuality or sexual health – as merely one opinion among many. Yet recognising plurality does not mean abandoning rights. Young people’s entitlement to reliable information and support remains essential. Safe Uncertainty simply acknowledges that young people will interpret that information within broader social and cultural frameworks that educators cannot fully control. Helping them navigate these frameworks thoughtfully can ultimately strengthen their capacity to exercise those rights.
Others may worry that dialogue about ‘different perspectives’ risks obscuring power inequalities, particularly those related to gender. We know that gender norms, reputational pressures and unequal expectations shape young people’s sexual cultures and experiences of harm. A pedagogy that ignores these dynamics would indeed be inadequate. Safe Uncertainty therefore requires attention to power. Exploring perspectives does not mean treating them as equally situated. Instead, it encourages students to examine how social norms, cultural narratives and institutional structures shape the perspectives people hold.
There are also practical questions. Teachers tell us that they feel underprepared to teach sensitive topics such as consent, pornography or sexual diversity. In this context, emphasising uncertainty might initially sound like removing guidance rather than providing it. It makes perfect sense why, as humans, we cling to certainty: it feels safe. In practice, however, Safe Uncertainty can be empowering for educators. It relieves teachers of the expectation that they must possess definitive answers to every moral question raised in the classroom. Instead, their role becomes facilitating thoughtful exploration while maintaining clear ethical boundaries – using authority differently rather than ceding it. Rather than looking for or providing correct answers, instead their role is to foster curiosity, to raise thoughtful questions: ‘where does this idea come from? How might that feel? How might that play out in real life? Why might someone say yes, even when they feel unsure?’ – questions designed not to be answered correctly, but to direct reflection.
Finally, critics from more conservative perspectives may argue that approaches framed as ‘open discussion’ still embed particular values. They may suspect that Safe Uncertainty subtly promotes liberal assumptions about sexuality while presenting itself as neutral. This critique highlights an important point: no educational approach is entirely value-free. Safe Uncertainty does not claim neutrality. It rests on a set of commitments: that young people deserve respect, that harm should be prevented and that pluralistic societies require the capacity to engage constructively with difference.
What it does resist is the idea that education should aim to secure ideological victory for one side of a cultural debate. We have seen a real concern – sometimes weaponised and politicised – that RSE is being used to indoctrinate young people with values that undermine the family and community and, worse still, that this is occurring in secret beyond the purview of parents. From a Safe Uncertainty perspective, we emphasise that successful RSE teaching does not end with the lesson; instead, it should continue beyond the classroom. Young people should leave with questions and ideas that they wish to explore and discuss further with those around them, including with their parents. It is why, in our ground rules, that we reject the notion that ‘what is spoken about in the room stays in the room’. Of course, we tell young people that it is important not to identify individuals or share anything personal about anyone in the room, but we very much encourage them to speak to their friends, parents and other important people in their lives, and carry on the conversations that we’ve had in the lesson. Instead of ‘indoctrination’ or ‘victory’, the focus is on preparing young people for the realities of social life, where they will encounter people who hold different beliefs about gender, sexuality, relationships and morality. Learning how to navigate these differences thoughtfully is itself a crucial life skill.
For practitioners and policymakers, this raises a different question about the purpose of RSE. Is the goal to ensure that young people leave the classroom with a predetermined set of correct beliefs? Or is the goal to help them develop the intellectual, relational and ethical capacities needed to navigate complex social worlds? If the aim is certainty, the culture wars are unlikely to disappear. But if the aim is to strengthen young people’s ability to engage with complexity responsibly, Safe Uncertainty offers a framework that moves beyond the impasse.
In doing so, it also offers something reassuring to educators. They do not need to resolve every disagreement or settle every moral question. Their role is to create spaces where young people can learn how to think, reflect and relate within a world that is, inevitably, uncertain.
What might Safe Uncertainty look like in practice?
Recent research provides a useful illustration of the kinds of challenges educators may encounter. A national Australian survey reported that around 40% of boys aged 13–17 agreed with the statement that women lie about domestic and sexual violence, alongside other indicators of misogynistic attitudes among adolescents.
For many educators, findings like this raise an immediate question: What should happen if such views are voiced in the classroom?
A common instinct – understandably – is to respond by correcting the statement immediately. The teacher might emphasise that false reports of sexual violence are rare and that dismissing victims’ claims contributes to wider patterns of victim-blaming. These points are important. Research on ‘rape myths’ shows that beliefs suggesting that victims commonly fabricate allegations can undermine support for victims and influence how cases are interpreted in legal and social contexts.
However, a purely corrective approach can sometimes close down the conversation before it has addressed the underlying beliefs or influences shaping the statement. It is important to recognise that we cannot offer a critical engagement and a reframing of contested matters before we surface the underlying reasoning and potential social and emotional dynamics at play. Students may feel publicly shamed, retreat into defensiveness, or disengage from the discussion entirely. A Safe Uncertainty approach therefore begins differently. Instead of immediately framing the comment as a position that must be defeated, the educator treats it as a starting point for exploration, while still maintaining clear ethical boundaries around harm and respect.
The teacher might begin with curiosity:
“That’s an interesting claim. Where do you think people hear that idea?”
This question opens space for students to reflect on influences such as social media, peer conversations, family narratives or online influencers. The educator can then broaden the inquiry:
“Why might some people believe that? What experiences or stories might lead to that perspective?”
Students may raise concerns about fairness, due process or high-profile media cases. These concerns are worth acknowledging rather than dismissing. Safe Uncertainty recognises that such views often emerge from a mixture of personal anxieties, cultural narratives and partial information. We need to ask and expose, what is the real fear behind the claim? What is underneath the surface At the same time, the educator introduces additional perspectives that invite students to reflect on the assumptions embedded within the claim itself:
“What do you think people mean when they say someone has ‘lied’ about violence? What kinds of situations might lead people to think that?”
This allows the class to examine the ambiguity often present in discussions about relationships, consent and harm. Students may recognise that public debates often frame the issue as a stark opposition between two positions: either someone has been falsely accused, or someone has been abused. A teacher might then invite further reflection:
“Why do you think conversations about this topic often get framed as a battle between those two possibilities?”
This opens space to explore the fears that can shape young people’s thinking. Some students may worry about fairness or the possibility of being wrongly blamed. Others may point to the difficulties victims face in being believed. Rather than positioning these concerns as mutually exclusive, the teacher can acknowledge that both relate to questions of trust, power and responsibility in relationships.
Only at this stage does the educator begin to introduce research evidence:
“What do we know from research about how often people report violence? And what might make it difficult for someone to report abuse?”
Students might consider barriers victims face in reporting violence, such as fear of not being believed, social stigma, or concerns about damaging relationships. The discussion can then shift toward relational ethics:
“If someone shares an experience of harm, how do we respond in ways that are fair, but also compassionate? What responsibilities do we have toward each other when trust and safety are at stake?”
Through this process, the conversation moves beyond adjudicating whether a statement is simply ‘true’ or ‘false’. Instead, students are invited to examine how cultural narratives, personal anxieties and social dynamics shape the way people interpret situations of harm. In doing so, the classroom becomes a space not only for evaluating evidence, but also for reflecting on the relational conditions that make trust, care and accountability possible.
Through this process, several important things happen:
First, harmful beliefs are not left unchallenged. Evidence and ethical reflection are introduced into the discussion. Second, the student who raised the view is not positioned as the problem to be corrected. Instead, the class examines the broader cultural narratives shaping the belief. Third, the discussion develops the relational and critical capacities that RSE aims to cultivate: recognising influence, evaluating claims and reflecting on ethical responsibilities.
This example also illustrates how Safe Uncertainty addresses many of the concerns discussed earlier. It does not relativise harm or treat misogyny as merely another viewpoint. Nor does it assume that debate will produce a clear winner. Instead, the teacher facilitates a structured exploration of the issue that integrates evidence, ethical reasoning and awareness of social context.
In doing so, the classroom becomes a space where difficult ideas can be examined rather than suppressed. This may ultimately be one of the most important functions of RSE in the current cultural climate. When young people encounter powerful narratives about gender and relationships – whether online, in peer groups or in wider political discourse – they need more than correct answers. They need the capacity to interrogate those narratives, understand their origins and reflect on their consequences. Safe Uncertainty offers a pedagogical stance for doing exactly that.
This example illustrates why the culture-war framing of RSE is ultimately unhelpful for classroom practice. If educators feel pressured to ‘win’ an ideological contest – either by shutting down controversial views or by defending them in the name of free expression – the educational opportunity is lost. Safe Uncertainty offers a different orientation. It allows difficult perspectives to surface without legitimising harm, and it creates space to examine the social narratives that shape young people’s thinking. In this sense, the aim of RSE is not to settle cultural debates inside the classroom. Rather, it is to equip young people with the intellectual, relational and ethical capacities to navigate those debates thoughtfully in the wider world.