We are happy to see some fantastic progress made in the new RSHE guidance towards educating young people to be able to look after their health and help prevent or earlier detect gynae cancers through their lives.

RSHE is Relationships, Sex, and Health Education. It is education in schools to help children and young people develop healthy relationships with themselves, their bodies, and the people around them to enable them to live happy, healthy and well lives.

RSHE was made a compulsory part of the curriculum in 2019 and this is the first update in guidance to the curriculum since then. Many organisations have been working to get improvements to the guidance and more tools and budget to support schools in delivering this curriculum.

At Eve, we know that education about your body and your gynae health can make all the difference in helping women and people with gynae organs get to know what is normal for them, spot any changes and feel confident to go and get checked by a doctor, helping detect any gynae cancers earlier when they are easier to treat.

We saw some important changes in guidance that will help better educate young people to be able to look after their gynae health. Here are our thoughts:

Correct anatomical language

First of all, from primary school onwards the guidance states that correct anatomical language should be used. This is words like vulva and vagina, penis and testicles. This is a fantastic step forward in helping reduce shame and stigma around gynae health. Using the correct language not only teaches children what their body parts are called but that it is normal and okay to use those words.

Shame and stigma is a big issue in gynae health and cancers, and can contribute to some women and people with gynae organs not feeling comfortable going to the doctors and getting symptoms checked and potentially getting a later diagnosis of gynae cancers. We hope this guidance will help the next generation feel more comfortable talking openly about gynae health and getting any potential symptoms checked quickly.

Menstrual health

In secondary school when educating about periods, the guidance now states that young people must also be taught when periods may be abnormal, when to go to a doctor and about common gynae health conditions like endometriosis and PCOS. It was a shame to not see gynacological cancers mentioned here, as three out of the five gynae cancers have abnormal bleeding as a red-flag symptom, womb, cervical and vaginal cancer. Still, this guidance will make a difference in helping people identify when their bleeding might be abnormal and when it needs checking by a doctor, which will help any cancer get detected earlier.

Self-examination and screening

The new guidance has a section in it about teaching the importance of looking after your health including self-examination and screening. We hope this will help increase uptake of cervical screening and self-checking the vulva for signs of cancer. Unfortunately there was no further detail about what self-examination and screening. We would like to see self-examining the vulva specifically mentioned.

There are several screening programmes in the NHS for different cancers, this includes a cervical screening programme to help prevent cervical cancer from developing. At the moment in the UK around 1 in 3 women and people with a cervix aren’t attending cervical screening when invited. In England, we have a plan to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040, and the World Health Organisation has also made a commitment to eliminate cervical cancer worldwide, which would need attendance to be at least 8 in 10. We hope that by educating young people about the importance and benefits of screening, the next generation can feel informed and empowered to attend when invited once they turn 25.

Vaccination

We were very happy to see that the new guidance includes educating about vaccines in a timely way for the young people’s vaccination schedules. This means educating about vaccines before they happen.

In the UK young people are invited to get a vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV) at 12-13 years old. HPV is a common virus that 8 in 10 of us will get in our lifetimes. HPV is passed on through skin-to-skin sexual contact. Most of the time, our immune system gets rid of HPV within two years without it causing any problems. If certain high-risk strains of HPV do lingers, they can go on to sometimes develop certain types of cancer: head and neck, cervical, vulval, vaginal, anal and penile cancers. HPV can affect anyone of any gender, and the HPV vaccination can benefit people of all genders by helping prevent several types of cancer.

The HPV vaccination is given at 12-13 because it is most effective when given before having any type of sexual activity. In the UK uptake rates of the vaccination are unfortunately lowering, and are particularly low in boys. We hope timely education of the HPV vaccine can help increase uptake by informing and empowering young people about the benefits of the vaccine and supporting them in having conversations with their parents, guardians or carers who will be consenting to them having the vaccine.

Our Know Your Body education programme

At Eve, we have a range of free to access and use lesson plans for young people from 7-13 covering topics such as anatomy, menstrual health, and HPV and vaccination. When we launched these lessons as part of our Know Your Body programme in 2022. We developed these lessons to build young people’s knowledge step-by-step in an age appropriate way as they go through school, starting with anatomy and periods in primary school, then building on that knowledge and moving on to HPV in secondary school.

The lesson plans were developed to be taught before a young person might experience something, from starting their period, to being offered the HPV vaccination. Our lesson plans use correct anatomy language, are developed to prevent passing on shame and stigma when teaching young people, as well as educating them not only about how their bodies work, but also how to know what is normal for you and spot when something isn’t that needs checking with a doctor.

It is fantastic to see this approach built in to the new RSHE guidance. There are lots of positive steps forward here that will help in the prevention and earlier detection of gynae cancers.

There are a few things we would like to see included to help it go further. We would like to see gynae cancer awareness included when talking about abnormal bleeding and vulval cancer specifically mentioned when educating about self-examination.

Today’s guidance updates are a great start in helping make a difference and help save lives in the future from the five gynae cancers. If you’re a teacher or educator, do take a look at our Know Your Body lesson plans which are free to download and use to support you in delivering your RSHE programme.