Teaching school students about consent should be considered as important as teaching them mathematics and English, a Queensland education department representative says.
Hayley Stevenson, the department's executive director of student protection and wellbeing, said teaching students about consent was "absolutely" vital and state schools would not be able to opt out of the new curriculum, which will be introduced next year.
Following a year of national conversation around the issue, ABC Radio Brisbane's School of Hard Talks brought together experts and students to discuss the delivery of consent education in schools, and to allow students to ask the questions they really want answers to.
Speaking at forum, Ms Stevenson said the department was considering a raft of measures to ensure schools excelled at teaching consent, including introducing assessments.
Queensland's new Respectful Relationships program will be rolled out across prep to year 12 classrooms next year.
Ms Stevenson said young people needed opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations to not only understand consent, but to also understand the drivers around inappropriate behaviours.
John Paul College principal and Independent Schools Queensland board chair Karen Spiller said one way schools could deliver effective consent education was to ensure it was part of the holistic experience for students every day.
Adair Donaldson, founder and director of Donaldson Law, said consent education should ensure young people were aware of the relevant laws, and consequences, pertaining to consent.
Bringing about change started with empowering young people to call out inappropriate jokes, former cricketer turned educator and advocate Michael Jeh told the forum.
Young people learned more effectively when they could contextualise things, so providing real-life examples was what would make a difference, R4Respect youth worker Marisha Tuialii said.
Students want clarity on changes
Ms Stevenson said respectful relationships education needed to be contextualised from prep to year 12.
One way R4Respect approached this was by using the power and control wheel to identify red flags in relationships, Ms Tuialii said.
The milkshake campaign fell flat and did not take into account that young people were mature and intelligent people, Ms Spiller said.
Mr Donaldson said instead "we should be talking to you about real cases" and their consequences.
Mr Donaldson said it was essential to educate people that consent could never be assumed.
"Just because somebody has consented previously, and just because you have been in a relationship with someone, doesn't mean that their consent is always going to be freely given, or given at all," he said.
Over time, there had been an evolution from the mantra, "No means no" to "Only yes means yes", Mr Jeh said.
The way to teach consent to young children, such as prep students, was to talk about personal boundaries as opposed to sexual relationships, Ms Tuialii said.
Ms Spiller said it was not until about year 5 that most schools introduced healthy sexual relationships education, but she believed you couldn't start too soon.
Mr Jeh said the conversation shouldn't be victim centric.
"Let's look at where the numbers are who's perpetrating. For any other aspect of life, we don't look at [the gender of] victims — with national security, terrorism, whatever, we're always looking at who's doing it," he said.
But Mr Donaldson said the reason the conversation concentrated on victims was because one in five women would be subjected to sexual assault, and one in 22 men.
The panel agreed that consent education relied on partnerships between schools, parents and the broader community.
"There's no doubt that schools have a part to play in this, but so do workforces, so do other employees, so do community groups, sporting groups," Ms Spiller said.
Ms Stevenson said there was not a specific time allocated to consent education, but it was embedded in the curriculum.
"Finding the time for these really important topics can be really challenging for our schools … So we are looking to unclutter the curriculum," she said.
Ms Tuialii said the youth-led R4Respect was the perfect example that consent could be taught.
As educators, Ms Spiller said she had faith that schools wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people.
It was young people who could bring about change by holding each other accountable, Mr Jeh said.
