Like many people who work in the field of education, I quite literally jumped for joy when I heard education secretary Justine Greening’s announcement last week that SRE was to be made compulsory across all schools. (The physical act of jumping was somewhat awkward, since I was rammed into a crowded Tube carriage at the time).

Ms Greening has been something of an enigma since her appointment last summer, overshadowed first by Theresa May’s hugely controversial drive to bring back grammar schools and then by the prime minister’s announcement in January that all schools would be offered free mental health first-aid training. The teaching profession has been waiting with baited breath for Greening to reveal what sort of education secretary she intends to be, and the ruling on SRE was, at the very least, promising in this regard.

Worryingly, however, under the new rules parents will still have the option to remove their children from SRE lessons. Evidence shows that where some parents might initially be sceptical about schools teaching their children something so subjectively tied up with morality as SRE, once the actual content of the lessons is explained to them, their reservations dissipate. After all, what kind of person would object to their five-year-old being taught that “pants are private” and that if someone touches them in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable, they shouldn’t hesitate to say something?

Let me preface what I’m about to say by acknowledging that there are many wonderful parents out there who have the kind of open, honest relationship with their children which mean they can discuss safe sex and healthy relationships extensively and compassionately. For these sorts of families, good-quality SRE can only serve to reinforce and enhance the conversations already happening at home. Yet, in the words of journalist and author Caitlin Moran, “not all homes are safe, Boden homes”, and for the most vulnerable children, school lessons might be the only SRE they receive.

Having said that, advances in technology have caused a huge chasm in social and sexual reference points between young people and even the most switched-on of parents. This isn’t any reflection on parental abilities, merely a consequence of being exposed to different values, influences and information. Someone has to bridge that gap, to try and understand the world young people inhabit and give them useful health and safety advice which will truly resonate. While I hesitate to place this burden upon teachers specifically, there’s no reason why schools can’t source qualified services externally.

‘Porn has changed the landscape’

There is a general consensus amongst experts in the field that pornography, sexting and social media have changed young people’s sexual landscape powerfully, and for the worse. Research shows that 52 per cent of 12-year-olds have seen online porn and by 16, 97 per cent are accessing it regularly (interestingly, most of the parents I speak to insist their children are in the 3 per cent). This, of course, shapes sexual expectations and many (predominantly feminist) scholars have linked the constant and casual objectification of women to increased sexual violence on university campuses. There is a drive at government level, pioneered by the excellent campaign Everyday Sexism, to address misogyny within SRE.

At Self-Esteem Team, for the past six months we have been conducting focus groups with teenagers aged 13 to 16 with a view to creating a healthy relationships class. We have found that it’s a tricky one to get right - a truly fit-for-purpose SRE lesson requires deftness of touch.

The discussions I’ve hosted have exposed three clear needs. One is to banish heteronormative assumption from the classroom. LGBT+ pupils told me that, while they didn’t necessary expect their teachers to have in-depth knowledge of LGBT issues, they would like to have their existence acknowledged. They also said they’d like their teachers to bear in mind that, statistically, at least three pupils in their classroom will identify as LGBT+, and not to wait until someone in their year group “comes out” before addressing this. It struck me that, whatever our sexuality, we are all responsible for contributing to a culture and society in which LGBT+ people exist and therefore it’s advantageous to increase our understanding.

The second need was, perhaps predictably, for emotional abuse, coercion and consent to be explored, particularly in relation to sexting. While there has been a recent public health campaign addressing this, pupils felt it was not nuanced enough and some even described it as patronising (although teachers told me they found it useful as a “kicking-off point” for classroom-based discussions).

Surprisingly, the largest number of teenagers said information on friendships and how to manage them would be more useful to them than focusing on romantic relationships. This included what to do if they found themselves deliberately socially isolated as a form of bullying and how to support friends whom they suspected might be in abusive romantic relationships, as well as those who might be struggling with their mental health.

None of the teenagers I spoke to mentioned pornography, perhaps because of embarrassment, or perhaps because it has become so normalised and all-pervasive that it didn’t occur to them. There is a growing demand among teachers, however, for some expertise on how to tackle porn, which has been met with huge enthusiasm by some parents and abject horror by others.

What is clear, then, is that SRE covers a potentially gigantic gamut above and beyond the traditional practising safe fruit (putting condoms on bananas) that most of my generation were taught. What is also clear is that there are some discrepancies between what pupils, campaigners, teachers and parents consider to be appropriate content for SRE lessons.

Greening’s announcement stated that schools would still have flexibility over the content delivered in SRE. I wonder then, in light of the fact that (in my experience) most schools offered some form of SRE prior to last week’s announcement, how much has really changed?

Natasha Devon is the  founder of the Body Gossip Education Programme and the Self-Esteem Team and former UK government mental health champion for schools. She tweets as @_NatashaDevon

For more columns by Natasha, visit her back-catalogue of articles

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? Follow TES on Twitter and like TES on Facebook