Intimate partner and sexual violence among young Australians remains alarmingly high. National data show that more than one in four 18–19-year-olds have experienced at least one form of abuse in the past 12 months. The consequences are profound - linked to depression, anxiety, substance use, post-traumatic stress, and disordered eating well into adulthood.
These harms can disrupt education, work, and even daily functioning.
Many young people form and maintain relationships through digital mediums, which bring new risks alongside new ways of connecting. It is no wonder then, that intimate partner violence and consent breaches now extend beyond physical spaces into digital environment.
Image-based abuse, location tracking, and digital control tactics are becoming increasingly common. These realities demand education that not only teaches consent and respect in traditional contexts but also recognises and responds to the harms that are occurring online.
Movements like Teach Us Consent have sparked a national conversation and driven change in how we address these issues. In response, the Australian Government has made consent education mandatory in all schools.
But the question remains: how do we ensure this education is evidence-based, non-stigmatising, engaging and relevant for young people today - so it might truly make an impact?
The respectED program will be delivered in schools in years 9 and 10 (Stage 5) and aims to prevent relationship and sexual violence through empowering young people with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to navigate relationships both online and offline.
Crucially, respectED has been co-designed with young people, including those with lived experience, to ensure the content is relevant, authentic, and resonates with the realities they face.
For this Project Profile, we spoke to Dr Amy-Leigh Rowe and Dr Siobhan O’Dean to learn more about the program and the trial.
Tell us about how the project started.
The idea of respectED began as a conversation in early 2022, sparked by a shared commitment to the prevention of intimate partner and sexual violence. At the time, Siobhan had completed her PhD on intimate partner violence and Amy on cumulative trauma, and both of us had built postdoctoral careers focused on youth prevention of risky behaviours.
We wanted to combine that expertise, our doctoral foundations, and years of prevention research, to create a program tailored for Australian adolescents. For a long time, respectED was just an idea, one which we nurtured through countless meetings, with no funding but plenty of determination. After two years of planning and persistence, we secured an MRFF grant to evaluate respectED, which was a moment that transformed our vision into reality.
What is different about the respectED program compared to other programs on consent education?
The respectED program stands apart because it combines scientific rigor with meaningful co-design. It is grounded in the best available evidence and shaped by the voices of those it serves: school students, teachers, and young people with lived experience. This approach ensures the program is not only theoretically sound but also practical, relatable, and relevant to contemporary young people. The program moves beyond one-off lessons by embedding respectful relationships education within a broader framework of skill-building and prevention science.
What also sets respectED apart is the use of cartoon storyboards which allow delivery of peer led messaging in a precise and controlled way. In doing so, students learn vicariously through the lives and experiences of the characters in the story. Teachers are kept in a central role as interactive classroom activities complement the cartoons and allow students to explore topics in more depth whilst developing practical and critical thinking skills.
Why is it so important to ensure that a program is age-appropriate and curriculum aligned?
Adolescence is a critical developmental stage, and programs that fail to match students’ cognitive, emotional, and social maturity risk being ineffective, or even harmful. Age-appropriate content ensures that the learnings resonate, and skills are achievable.
Curriculum alignment guarantees integration into existing learning structures, which supports teachers by providing clear guidance and reducing the burden of creating lessons from scratch. It also gives teachers confidence to deliver challenging content by equipping them with structured resources that are evidence-based, and easy to implement.
What benefits can you get from evaluating a program through a randomised control trial?
A RCT is the gold standard for evaluating program effectiveness. By randomly assigning some schools to run respectED and others to continue with usual practice, we can compare outcomes in a fair and unbiased way. This gives us the strongest evidence that any changes we see are because of the program, not other factors.
Expressions of interest are now open for schools to register for the respectED trial in 2026. Please get in touch or email the team at respectED.study@sydney.edu.au for more information.