Shaping Safe Relationships in Secondary Schools in England

Violence against women and girls prevention programme promoting healthy and respectful relationships in secondary schools. Finding out what works to prevent violence against young women and girls (VAWG) is a key part of delivering on YEF’s mission to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. It is also central to the cross-government strategy ‘Freedom from Violence and Abuse’ that was published in December 2025. This funding round forms part of a wider YEF programme of funding, evaluation and research over the next three years on what works to prevent and respond to VAWG.

Objective 1: Promoting Healthy and Respectful Relationships in Secondary Schools

We know that supporting children and young people to develop the skills and understanding they need to build healthy and respectful relationships is an important early step to preventing the emergence of harmful behaviours in relationships, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse in relationships, coercive or controlling behaviour, harassment and exploitation, including online and technology-facilitated abuse. This is why the Department for Education and the Home Office have partnered with YEF to launch this funding round. We are seeking to fund interventions and generate robust evidence on how secondary schools can best be supported to deliver healthy relationships content, improve young people’s knowledge and attitudes towards healthy relationships and harmful behaviours, and ultimately reduce violence against women and girls. This aligns with both Pillar 1: Prevention and early intervention in cross-government strategy on VAWG, and the Department of Education’s roll-out of revised statutory Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum in September 2026.

What we’re looking to fund

We are inviting applications across two strands:

• Strand 1: Building school capacity internally on healthy relationships delivery
  • Projects that strengthen the confidence, skills and capacity of secondary school staff to deliver universal, high-quality content around healthy and respectful relationships as part of the new Relationship, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) curriculum. We would expect these interventions to primarily focus on providing training and support for teachers on dealing with sensitive topics in some or all of the areas of Respectful Relationships, Online Safety and Awareness, Being Safe and Intimate and Romantic Relationships in the RSHE curriculum.
  • We will consider interventions that cover the above but also include wider school approaches designed to strengthen school culture, leadership and systems around healthy relationships (such as the integration of healthy relationship topics in other subjects, wider teacher training or awareness campaigns across the school).
• Strand 2: Delivery of healthy relationships content of RSHE by external providers
  • Projects by experienced, external specialist providers to deliver universal healthy relationships content in the new RSHE curriculum directly to young people in secondary schools (some or all of the topics of Respectful Relationships, Online Safety and Awareness, Being Safe and Intimate and Romantic Relationships). Applicants should have some prior experience in delivering the proposed project model. Projects must be delivered in England, and work with young people aged 11-16 in secondary school settings.

Please note that we are planning a further funding round in the summer that will focus on supporting schools with targeted interventions for young people to respond to inappropriate and problematic behaviours around teenage relationships (prior to these reaching the threshold where intervention from other statutory agencies, such as police or social care, is required).

Scale of the evaluation

We will be seeking to fund and evaluate each project selected. We’ll be prioritising projects and organisations that are able to reach enough participants and schools to support a robust impact evaluation. Please see the eligibility criteria below for more details and the application guidance for details of YEF’s evaluation approach and expectations of projects.

Applications should be submitted to: with the subject line VAWG Prevention Proposal – Strand 1 or Strand 2 (as appropriate to your application). The deadline for submission is 9 am, Monday, 27th July 2026.

Information webinar

YEF hosted a webinar on this Objective, covering the aims of the funding round, key requirements for applicants, and practical guidance on the application and assessment process, including partnerships, evaluation design, and budgeting. The session also included a substantial Q&A.

Estimated timeline

These are expected timelines based on previous similar projects and evaluations, but individual project timelines for school recruitment and delivery may vary. The full eligibility requirements are summarised below and explained in more detail in the Application Guidance. Please ensure your intervention meets all these requirements before proceeding with an application.

• Location: your intervention must be delivered in England.
• Your organisation: your organisation must be a registered charity, company, statutory body or CIC.
• Activities: interventions must fit within one of the strands listed within this guidance.
• Target schools and children: interventions must support outcomes for children and young people aged 11-16, in state secondary schools.
• Outcomes: we’re primarily interested in interventions that are focused on reducing violence against women and girls and harmful behaviours in teenage relationships over the long term. Within the timeframes of the delivery and evaluation, interventions should aim to change children’s knowledge and attitudes around healthy relationships, gender norms and harmful behaviours in teenage relationships.
• Scale: You must be able to reach enough schools to support a robust and meaningful evaluation. We estimate that this will involve:
  • Strand 1: Delivery of the intervention to one or more year groups in 30 secondary schools (with another 30 schools being a control group where existing practice is continued).
  • Strand 2: Delivery of the intervention to one or more year groups across 20-30 schools (depending on the evaluation design, a further 30 schools may also be needed for the control group where existing practice is continued).

The exact number required will depend on the final evaluation design, but applicants will need to demonstrate their capacity to deliver at this scale.

Timeline: This delivery in schools is likely to start in September 2027 and must be finished by December 2028 at the latest.

Willingness to engage in an independent evaluation: YEF exists to better understand what works to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence. To help us achieve this, you will need to work with an evaluation partner throughout your intervention. You’ll need to agree to certain evaluation tools and approaches to ensure the most robust evaluation can take place, including that participating schools (or, in some cases, year groups) will be randomly allocated between intervention and control groups.

Readiness for evaluation: We are looking for interventions which are ready to be evaluated via an impact study. Please see the criteria in the “Readiness for evaluation” section of the Guidance.

Track record: We will assess organisations’ capacity to support children and young people at the kind of scales mentioned above. Your organisation should also have experience of delivering your proposed intervention model (at least a year). We will fund interventions looking to scale, expand or explore different modes of delivery, as long as they can demonstrate the expertise and experience to facilitate this.

Frequently asked questions

An FAQ document can be found here. The document will be regularly updated across the funding call: VAWG Objective 1: FAQ