Ensuring young people have important guidance in their development of respectful relationships will be the focus of a new $4 million program in all public schools.

The program will tackle key community issues of concern such as the kind of toxic masculinity promoted on social media increasingly perpetrated against staff and students, gender-based violence and disrespectful behaviours that can often lead to violence.

Schools will be supported to implement a whole-school approach to gender equality and tackling sexism, with specific action to promote positive masculinity and challenging the kind of harmful stereotypes often displayed online.

The curriculum will also be updated to ensure students focus more on misogyny, disrespectful behaviours and gender-based violence.

An advisory group with experts, department and school staff, students and parent representatives will also be created to support the roll-out.

Riverbanks College Principal Joe Priolo said, from the moment we first opened our doors to students in 2022, this school has had a central focus on respectful relationships – between our staff, our students, and our wider community – in order to drive our core school values of kindness, collaboration, grit and belonging.

“We address the topic of respectful relationships in a variety of age-appropriate ways with our students every day and find that we have a very inclusive society in and around the school”.

“We find our young people are more accepting and inclusive than the community may have been 20 years ago, but we continue to build on that understanding in terms of issues such as respect, consent, fairness and inclusion”, said Priolo.

Among the anticipated work, will be a new respectful relationships education webpage, an update of current teacher resources, and the development of new resources for teachers and families – along with information to support vulnerable groups including Aboriginal students, those who are culturally or linguistically diverse, and students with disabilities.

A final implementation plan, focused on encouraging students to treat people with respect, kindness and understanding along with working on stamping out misogyny and harassment, will be rolled out early next year.