The 3rd Australian Survey of Teachers of Relationships and Sexuality Education 2026
Exploring the experiences of teachers, external specialist educators, school-based adolescent health nurses, school leaders, and other school staff involved in delivering or supporting relationships and sexuality education across Australian schools.
The 3rd Australian Survey of Teachers of Relationships and Sexuality Education 2026
Understanding training and support needs
Exploring the experiences of teachers, external specialist educators, school-based adolescent health nurses, school leaders, and other school staff involved in delivering or supporting relationships and sexuality education across Australian schools.
This report presents findings from the 3rd Australian Survey of Teachers of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE), the latest in a national study first conducted in 2010 and repeated in 2018.
Drawing on a national survey, interviews and focus groups, the study explores the experiences of teachers, external specialist educators, school-based adolescent health nurses, school leaders, and other school staff involved in delivering or supporting RSE across Australian schools.
The report examines the factors that help teachers feel confident, comfortable and supported in delivering RSE, while identifying opportunities to strengthen sustainable, high-quality practice. The findings show that teacher confidence and capability are strengthened by comprehensive pre-service and ongoing professional learning, active and visible leadership support, collaborative delivery models, and clear curriculum expectations.
The study also identifies persistent challenges, including limited pre-service preparation, inconsistent and under-resourced professional learning, and concerns about community or parent backlash.
The findings informed 13 recommendations to support coordinated action by Australian and state and territory governments, teachers and education providers, school systems and sectors, individual schools and school leadership teams.
Previous instances of the Australian Survey of Teachers of Relationships and Sexuality Education
Researchers
Lily Moor, Anita Dabrowski, Bridie Duffus, Jennifer Power, Alexandra James, Jacqueline Hendriks, Tiffany Jones, Thomas Norman, Adrian Farrugia, Andrea Waling, Adam Bourne
Partners and funding
This project was funded by the Australian Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, and has been supported by a team of community partners. We are grateful to Sexual Health Victoria, True Relationships and Reproductive Health, SHINE SA, Sexual Health Quarters, Family Planning Tasmania, Family Planning Welfare Association NT, Sexual and Reproductive Health Australia (formerly Family Planning Alliance Australia), and the Curtin University RSE Project for strategic input and support for the project. We acknowledge contributions from Adjunct Professor Suzanne Fraser.
This is the third national survey of RSE teachers that has been conducted by the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University, and we acknowledge previous researchers who have worked on this study, including Anthony Smith, Marisa Schlichthorst, Anne Mitchell, Jenny Walsh, Anthony Lyons, Pam Blackman, Marian Pitts, Paulina Ezer and Christopher Fisher.
Dedication
This report is dedicated to Dr Paulina Ezer. Paulina led the 2nd National Survey of Australian Teachers of Sexuality Education 2018, and made invaluable contributions to research on comprehensive relationships and sexuality education for young people in Australia. Her excellent work underpins this study.
Participant information archive
What will you ask me?
This survey should take about ten minutes, and includes:
- Basic, non-identifiable demographics
- Details of your experience, including
- Length of time teaching (or in teacher training) overall
- Current/main subject area
- Training on relationships and/or sexual health education
- Length of time teaching this type of education
- How prepared, confident and comfortable you feel delivering relationships and/or sexual health education
- How supported you feel delivering this education
- What (if anything) you worry about when teaching/planning to teach these topics
No identifiable information will be collected about you or your school. Participation is 100% voluntary, and you can opt out at any time until you click 'Submit'. This won't affect any relationships with La Trobe or any other organisation.
More to say?
We're interviewing teachers, sex educators, school leadership and school welfare staff!
In addition to the online teacher survey, we will also be doing in-depth interviews (approx 1 hour).
After completing your survey, you can express your interest in being interviewed. Interviewees will receive a $70 gift card for their time (valid for Australian residents only). This is 100% optional and not linked to your survey response. Your interview responses will be kept fully anonymous.
Are you a school principal, assistant principal, other school leadership staff, welfare staff member or a specialist provider of sexual health education in school? Express your interest in doing an interview.
What are the benefits?
This is an opportunity to share your experiences of teaching relationships and consent, sexual health, human development and sex ed, including how prepared and supported you feel to deliver these subjects, and any pain points.
The results of this survey will be made available to policy makers and end-user groups, including student groups and teacher organisations.
What are the risks?
There is a small risk that, for some people, questions about delivering (or planning to deliver) these subjects may elicit feelings of mild discomfort. You can skip questions or exit the survey at any time. Check our participant information and consent form for a list of support phone numbers if required.
We will make every effort not to publish any information that identifies you or your school, but please avoid supplying any directly or cirucmstantially identifying information.
We also strongly encourage you to contact us if you experience anything you aren't sure about.
What happens to my information?
Your information will be collected, stored and published anonymously. We will store information securely for 5 years after the project's completion, then destroy all your data. For more info, you can read the La Trobe Research Data Management Policy.
Once they're ready, publications from this survey will be available on this page.
You can also sign up to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook or LinkedIn for all the latest Centre research updates. This is not linked to your survey response.