The Department for Education has set out a new school-based response to misogyny, with the Education Secretary presenting the issue as both a safeguarding concern and a matter of school culture. According to the government announcement, schools will receive a practical framework backed by guidance, teacher training and support for parents. The package is intended to reach beyond a single lesson or assembly. The Department for Education says it should shape classroom teaching, enrichment activity, pastoral systems and day-to-day interactions, with the stated aim of building respect and belonging across the whole school environment.
The policy case rests on new evidence cited by the government. In data from May, half of girls said they had heard misogynistic comments from other pupils during a week at school, while almost a third of pupils in Years 10 and 11 said they had recently heard comments that made them worry about the safety of girls. That places the issue within ordinary school life rather than at the margins. The practical effect is that senior leaders, designated safeguarding leads and classroom staff are being asked to identify harmful attitudes earlier and respond before they become accepted as routine behaviour.
The Department for Education says the new work builds on the strengthened Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum already being taught in schools. Ministers are tying the misogyny plan to existing teaching on healthy relationships, recognising harmful behaviour and understanding online risks, including deepfakes and other harmful content. As set out by the department, this is less a separate curriculum strand than a delivery package around material schools are already expected to teach. For schools, the immediate question is likely to be how far the new framework changes lesson planning, staff development and pastoral practice rather than statutory content alone.
To support that delivery, the government has allocated £150,000 for a new RSHE expert advisory group. The announcement says the group will bring together specialist organisations and practitioners to develop resources so that teachers can cover sensitive and complex topics with greater confidence. The funding is focused on a familiar pressure point in RSHE delivery: staff confidence. The Department for Education is indicating that curriculum content needs to be backed by clear teaching materials and credible support if schools are to handle difficult issues consistently.
The announcement also points to two new programmes that began work this week under the government's £16 million Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention Programme. One will work with secondary pupils on attitudes to healthy relationships, while the other will work specifically with boys to challenge harmful attitudes and negative online influences. Both are presented as pilot activity rather than immediate national rollout. According to the government, the purpose is to test which approaches are most effective before extending the work to more schools, placing evaluation at the centre of the next stage.
The government is also working with the Youth Endowment Fund on programmes for 12 to 16-year-olds aimed at promoting respect, building resilience and providing positive role models. In policy terms, that places the schools package alongside a wider prevention effort rather than treating misogyny as a problem for schools to manage in isolation. The same announcement links the education measures to the government's broader work on violence against women and girls, including a separate partnership with major employers announced the same day. That linkage suggests ministers want the issue addressed across both education and employment settings.
Future curriculum reform is expected to include stronger teaching on media literacy, with ministers saying pupils should be better equipped to assess online material, spot manipulation and think critically about what they see. That is a notable part of the package, because the announcement explicitly connects misogyny in schools with online influence as well as face-to-face behaviour. For school leaders and parents, the policy offers a clearer framework but not yet every operational detail. What is clear from the Department for Education's statement is the overall approach: misogyny is being addressed through curriculum support, staff training, safeguarding practice and targeted prevention work, rather than through one-off campaigns alone.