MNHQ here: we asked you if PSHE should be compulsory in English schools and you said...

[RowanMumsnet]

...yes (by a fairly whopping 90% to 4%).

Many thanks to all who took part. Lots of you will have noticed last week's moves towards making relationships education compulsory for primary schools and relationships and sex education compulsory in secondary schools - something else that we've campaigned on for a long time. The details of this one are still to be worked out and we will try to flag up any public consultations or announcements on the details.

For the wider topic of PSHE, there's also likely to be a public consultation soon that we will ask for your input on - so stand by to be well and truly consulted.

And for those of you not in England... here's a video of some kittens.

Thanks
MNHQ

I think that like sex education, mental health education needs to be taken out of PSHE lessons and made a compulsory subject in its own right. There is a government petition to do just this, and you can sign in here petition.parliament.uk/petitions/176555

I think that making a subject like this compulsory is unlikely to make any difference. You can have all the classes you like about normal relationships, about mental health and all the rest: it's extremely unlikely to make a change to anyone. As everyone on this site makes clear: you live the relationships that are modelled for you. In a 1 hour class a few times a week no substantial difference can be made (that's assuming that the total focus of this class is normal relationships. In reality we're talking a few hours per semester on the topic).

I'm not saying we do nothing- I'm just saying this is the British fantasy about the state. Legislate to make it governments problem and they respond by spending millions (if not billions) of pounds on an education programme that actually achieves very little.