Petition delivered on bringing back Tiriti-led, inclusive Relationships & Sexuality Education

On 24 April 2026, Auckland Women’s Centre sent the letter below to the Minister of Education, Erica Stanford – along with the names of the 3,532 people who signed our petition, and cc’d in opposition spokespeople. Our 2025 submission on the previous draft of relationships and sexuality education can be found here (PDF). 

Hon. Erica Stanford
Minister of Education
E.Stanford@ministers.govt.nz

24 April 2026

Tēnā koe Minister Stanford,

On 17 March 2025, we wrote to ask you to reinstate the 2020 Relationships and Sexuality Education Guidelines for the sake of the safety of women and children, as RSE is a key tool of primary prevention of gender-based violence. Instead, the Ministry of Education released a draft RSE curriculum in April 2025 which included no acknowledgement of diverse gender identities and little overt acknowledgement of Mātauranga Māori, and which was likely to reduce the capability of RSE to prevent violence against women even while online and real-world misogyny is increasing.

Now we write to you again, as the current draft iteration of the Year 0-10 Health curriculum is concerning not only for the reasons above, which continue; but also because your Ministry has now also removed any mention of diverse sexualities. We are, frankly, appalled.

As per the attached submission (submitted via the consultation portal today) and the petition enclosed signed by 3,532 people, we urge you to:

1. Immediately reinstate the expert-led, Tiriti-based and LGBTQI+ inclusive 2020 Relationships & Sexuality Education guidelines, for the prevention of bullying, abuse and violence
2. Start and maintain an ongoing process of updating and improving the 2020 guidelines and underlying curriculum, to ensure they’re always fit-for-purpose for all communities (including disabled children) in a fast-changing and increasingly online world. The ongoing improvement process should :
   1. Honour te Tiriti o Waitangi by ensuring decision-making is shared across Tiriti partners: tangata whenua and the Crown, in all development of RSE
   2. Be led by experts, including Māori experts, in Māori and non-Māori education, violence prevention and health
3. Scrap this proposed counter-productive 2026 relationships and “sex education” curriculum, which is exclusionary, fragmented, and not fit-for-purpose, and which will reduce the effectiveness and strength of violence prevention in schools
4. Implement the ERO recommendations to increase consistency in RSE teaching across schools, while retaining the right of parents to remove students from RSE if they wish.

Ngā mihi,

Maia Hall
Centre Manager

Cc: opposition spokespeople: Ginny Andersen (Education – Labour); Willow-Jean Prime (Māori Education – Labour); Lawrence Xu-Nan (Education – Greens); Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (co-leader – Te Pāti Māori); Marama Davidson (Family Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention – Greens); and Helen White (Family Violence and Sexual Violence Prevention – Labour).

Attachment:

Auckland Women’s Centre submission on the proposed Health & Physical Education curriculum (focused on Relationships and Sexuality Education)

Relationships and Sexuality Education is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s key tools of primary prevention of gender-based violence. As such, it is too important to change even slightly, let alone wholesale, without ensuring all the ramifications for the safety of our communities – particularly women and children – are clear.

The importance of effective violence prevention cannot be overstated: for example, around a third of women in Aotearoa NZ have experienced sexual violence and many more experience non-sexual relationship violence. We need to use all the tools we can to change such entrenched violence.

The government’s proposed RSE fails in the critical missions of violence prevention and support of respect and social wellbeing in multiple ways, as dozens of health experts and community organisations have already advised Minister Erica Stanford. The latest curriculum draft ignores nearly all their advice:

The RSE proposals “underserve rangatahi Māori and will not reduce inequities in sexual violence victimisation.” – Associate Professor of Psychology, Jade Le Grice (Ngai Tupoto, Ngati Korokoro, Ngati Wharara, Te Pouka), University of Auckland

“This curriculum sidesteps several critical issues… This puts young people’s safety at risk – both within and outside school” – Jackie Edmond, Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (formerly Family Planning)

We oppose the government’s ideological and non-expert approach to changing RSE for rangatahi, which will reduce support for  young people’s safety, confidence and respect for each other. We oppose the government’s proposed relationships and “sex education” curriculum, including the following aspects:

1. The dishonouring of  Te Tiriti o Waitangi
2. The absence of respect for diverse gender identities
3. The absence of respect for diverse sexualities
4. A lack of genuine engagement with multicultural perspectives, normalising a monocultural, Pākehā view of the world. (More detail on these four concerns is given below.)

Our recommendations include:

• Immediately reinstate the expert-led, Tiriti-based and LGBTQI+ inclusive 2020 Relationships & Sexuality Education guidelines, for the prevention of bullying, abuse and violence
• Start and maintain an ongoing process of updating and improving the 2020 guidelines and underlying curriculum, to ensure they’re always fit-for-purpose for all communities (including disabled children) in a fast-changing and increasingly online world. The ongoing improvement process should :
  1. Honour te Tiriti o Waitangi by ensuring decision-making is shared across Tiriti partners: tangata whenua and the Crown, in all development of RSE
  2. Be led by experts, including Māori experts, in Māori and non-Māori education, violence prevention and health
• Scrap this proposed counter-productive 2026 relationships and “sex education” curriculum, which is exclusionary, fragmented, and not fit-for-purpose, and which will reduce the effectiveness and strength of violence prevention in schools
• Implement the Education Review Office recommendations to increase consistency in RSE teaching across schools, while retaining the right of parents to remove their children from RSE if they wish.

These recommendations are supported by a petition signed by 3,532  people  (by 10am 24 April 2025)

Concern 1: The government dishonours Te Tiriti o Waitangi, our constitutional document by
– Omitting Te Tiriti from the 2026 RSE proposal
– Omitting references to Mātauranga Māori from the 2026 RSE proposal.
– Making unilateral decisions about Te Tiriti and Mātauranga Māori within the 2026 RSE proposal instead of making decisions with, and as honourable, Te Tiriti partners.

All these government moves are perverse and deliberate institutional racism, proactively ignoring Tiriti obligations. This abysmal abuse of power, reinforcing historical amnesia and monoculturalism, is at odds with a curriculum that aims to educate and prepare our future generations for healthy relationships and consent: Crown power is attempting to remove indigenous knowledges from education without consent. These ideological and white supremacist moves do not support Māori aspirations for Māori students, nor do they support aspirations for non-Māori students, such as being respectful of Te Tiriti, tangata whenua, and each other.

Concern 2: The absence of diverse gender identities is an absence of respect. As Hohou Te Rongo Kahukura wrote in the first round of RSE consultation: “Failing to acknowledge the vibrant reality of gender diversity will not make transgender, non-binary, Takatāpui, fa’afafine, fakaleitī, akava’ine, and vakasalewalewa students stop being who they are – they will just have to hide.

This erasure will make going to school more difficult. It will make these students more likely to be bullied by other students. It will impact their mental health and wellbeing. And it will fail to equip students who are not transgender with knowledge, attitudes and skills which will promote respect, inclusion and social cohesion.”

Policing of and restrictions on gender identities due to exclusions of non-cis, non-binary gender identities includes policing of and restrictions on women’s identities, cis as well as trans. See our 2024 op ed “Why Women Need to Stand Up for Trans Rights”

Concern 3: An erasure of diverse sexualities. It’s as if the 1986 homosexual law reform never happened. The RSE proposal “prescribes a normative western focus on binary notions of gender and the reification of heterosexuality as the default normative (and valid) way of being, excluding and marginalising our rangatahi who identify outside of these categories and boxes.” (Associate Professor Jade Le Grice, Morgan Tupaea, and Fern Smith, researchers at Te Pūtahi o Pūtaiao | Centre for Kaupapa Māori Science, University of Auckland )

Concern 4: A narrow monocultural approach which sidelines Māori, Pacific and ethnic community approaches to relationships apart from handwaves to “diverse communities” (see quotes in Concerns 2&3 re diverse gender identities and sexualities). There is no guidance as to how to teach multiple approaches. Again, Pākehā approaches are promoted as the norm, rather than one set of approaches among many as is appropriate for our Tiriti-based, multicultural nation.