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Government-backed lessons will teach school students that no one can consent to choking during sex.

The resources developed by Oak National Academy aim to help schools teach in line with the revised relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance, which comes into force in September.

Aimed at 14- to 15-year olds, the resources will make it clear that strangulation or suffocation during sex is a criminal offence that carries a prison sentence.

There has been growing concern about the normalisation of choking among young people, an emerging harm linked to the widespread use of online pornography.

suggests that 43 per cent of sexually active 16- and 17-year-olds in the UK have experienced strangulation.

Teaching about ‘blanket consent’

Non-fatal strangulation was criminalised in 2022, and carries a sentence of up to five years in prison. The government plans to ban its depiction in pornography.

However, Oak National Academy warned that many young people appear to believe it is legal as long as consent is given and no visible injury results from it.

The lessons make it clear that this is not the case, stating that “no one can legally consent to being strangled because the risk of serious harm is too high”.

Lessons will also include cautions about “blanket consent” during sex - the idea that once someone has agreed to a sexual encounter, they have implicitly agreed to everything that might happen within it.

Schools minister Georgia Gould said: “Misogynistic views are not innate, they are learned, and
we are using every possible tool to achieve our mission of halving violence against women and girls.”

The updated RSHE guidance also includes teaching on mental health and “incel culture”.

Oak National Academy, the curriculum resources provider that was set up as an arm’s-length body of the Department for Education in 2022, has released a full set of new RSHE materials, including teaching on harmful sexual behaviour and where the law stands.

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