What Young People Actually Want to Know About Sex and Relationships
We run a platform called Okay to Ask where young people can submit anonymous questions about sex and relationships. No filters, no judgement, no teacher watching over their shoulder. We've had over 150 questions so far, and reading through them is one of the most useful things I do. Because the questions young people ask when nobody's watching are very different from the ones they ask in class.
They ask about . About whether their body is normal. About whether it's OK to not want sex. About what happens the first time. About feelings they don't have a name for. About things they've seen online that confused or worried them.
And when I look at what most schools are teaching in RSE, there's a gap. Not because schools are doing it badly, but because the curriculum tends to focus on risk — , , violations, online dangers — and leaves out the questions young people actually have about themselves.
The gap between curriculum and curiosity
The Sex Education Forum's 2024 poll of over 1,000 young people found that 50% rated their RSE as good or very good — the highest since polling began, which is progress. But only 43% felt personally represented and included by what they were taught.
Young people reported not learning enough about pornography (58%), LGBTQ+ relevant information (54%), and healthy relationships (54%). Only 46% learned about how to access local sexual health services. And 30% said social media was their main source of information about and , ahead of school at 25%.
That last statistic is the one that should concern us most. When school isn't meeting the need, young people go elsewhere. And elsewhere doesn't have a curriculum, a safeguarding policy, or anyone checking whether the information is accurate.
What the questions reveal
The anonymous questions we receive through Okay to Ask cluster around a few themes.
The first is normality. Am I normal? Is my body normal? Is it normal to feel this way? Is it normal to not feel this way? These questions come from a place of genuine anxiety, and they rarely get answered in RSE because the curriculum doesn't make space for them. When every lesson is about what can go wrong, there's no room to talk about what's actually going on.
The second is readiness. Young people want to know how you know when you're ready for a sexual relationship. They want to talk about what intimacy actually involves — not just the biology, but the emotional reality of it. This is the content most likely to make teachers uncomfortable, but it's the content young people are most hungry for.
The third is digital life. Questions about what they've seen online, whether it's normal, whether what happens in pornography is what happens in real life. These questions often carry a weight of shame — young people worry that even having seen something means there's something wrong with them.
Teaching to the real questions
I'm not suggesting schools should answer every anonymous question in a classroom setting. But I am suggesting that the questions young people ask when they feel safe should inform what we teach. If pupils are anxious about whether their bodies are normal, that tells us something about what our curriculum is missing. If they're confused about what they've seen online, that's a signal that our media literacy provision isn't landing.
Open discussion formats work well here. The Sex Education Forum found that young people identified open discussion as the RSE format they wanted more of, along with exploring scenarios and considering different points of view. That tracks with my experience. The sessions where pupils learn the most are the ones where they get to talk, not the ones where they sit and listen.
Anonymous question boxes — physical or digital — are one of the simplest and most effective tools in RSE. They give every pupil a voice, including the ones who'd never speak up in class. And they give teachers a window into what's actually on their pupils' minds.
Trusted resources
- Sex Education Forum: Young people's RSE poll 2024 — findings on what pupils want from RSE (sexeducationforum.org.uk)
- Brook: Analysis of the 2024 RSE poll findings (brook.org.uk)
- DfE 2026 statutory guidance: Curriculum content on relationships and intimacy (gov.uk)
If you'd like to hear more about what young people are asking and how to build it into your teaching, get in touch.
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