Launching our First Impact Report

Exciting stuff

This January 2023, it’s our fourth birthday!

To celebrate, we’re sharing our first ever Impact Report. It showcases our work over the past 4 years that has been dedicated to improving Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), and in turn, the lives of young people.

Quality RSHE is an essential part of a young person’s education. It helps them to: understand themselves and others better, recognise what makes them feel comfortable and uncomfortable, know their rights and celebrate differing bodies, sexualities and perspectives, amongst much more.

Our approach has always been student-centred, arts-based and focused on social action. I’m incredibly proud (and a bit emotional!) at what we’ve put into the world during this time.

Some of my personal highlights are:

• A teacher shouting out at the end of our RSHE training that it’s the best training they’ve been to in their 15+ year teaching career.

• Overhearing Y9 boys talking seriously about how they might support someone who has faced street harassment.

• Growing a team of facilitators and partners who are so skilled and so wonderful.

• A queer young person personally thanking me for a session on relationships where they felt seen and validated for the first time at school.

• Building and growing SB with my best friend and business partner, Anna.

Please have a read of our full Impact Report (download below) for details on how many students and teachers we’ve worked with, alongside verbatim feedback, case studies and what’s next for SB.

Real stuff

I also want to take this opportunity to be honest. Alongside our gorgeous, shiny report, I want to share some hard truths about the state of education right now.

Because, when we set up in 2019, we didn’t know we’d get this far.

We were launching an education venture during the back end of austerity 1.0, which now looks like the golden years. This time of hardship for schools has only increased since. Schools have suffered huge financial struggle through 10+ years of being underfunded and devalued by our government. Obsession with attainment metrics has meant that historically, RSHE has been de-prioritised at every step. The 2020 government-mandated RSHE guidance has meant that finally, RSHE is compulsory. But many schools are still struggling to deliver it with limited budget and capacity.

A year into us setting up SB, and the pandemic took hold. Our work totally paused and we thought that might be the end of us. Luckily, we were able to take some of our work online, and develop our teacher training. But the pandemic had a seismic impact on schools and pupils and we are all still recovering from this: catch up education, increased mental ill health in young people, a cover crisis for sick staff.

It hasn’t been easy being a co-founder. We haven’t paid ourselves properly and have had to make sacrifices. To work on something we’re passionate about is a privilege that not all can afford.

I care about our work deeply and I love what we do. But the truth is, ideally SB wouldn’t have to exist. We’re plugging a gap right now.

RSHE should be properly embedded in all schools and all teachers should have had the funding and capacity to receive comprehensive training and support.

We’re working towards this future.

Future stuff

In the meantime, we want to work with schools in a way that better supports them, and us. We want our work to have a legacy beyond us being there.

This year, we’re pivoting our model to work more holistically with schools.

We’ll be offering whole-school RSHE packages made up of a combination of:

• Student workshops - designed to engage young people in skills-based learning on topics like intimacy, relationships, pornography, gender etc.

• Staff training - designed to increase staff confidence to talk about RSHE topics in an engaging, inclusive way.

• Access to original SB resources - ready-to-use lesson plans and resources for busy teachers.

• 1:1 consultation - bespoke support to problem-solve issues or work through parent consultations etc.

Our whole-school RSHE packages will provide wraparound support, increase impact for young people and educators and maximise efficiency for the business. Find out more about them here.

RSHE isn’t about a one-off conversation. It’s little and often interventions with students, across the school. With staff who feel confident to navigate questions and students who don’t feel ashamed to ask them.

Please get in touch if this sounds like something your school would benefit from. And get cosy reading our Impact Report with a cuppa!