RSHE from September 2026: AI, deepfakes and what schools teach

September 21, 2026

A rule that changed three weeks ago binds every school in England, including the independent ones, and most parents have not heard a word about it. The revised RSHE guidance came into effect on 1 September 2026, and it now asks schools to teach about AI, deepfakes and misinformation. Here is what it actually obliges, which year groups it lands on, and what you are entitled to read.

What changed on 1 September 2026, and why this is England only

The Department for Education revised its statutory guidance for Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education, published the new version on 15 July 2025, and set it to come in a year later. The gov.uk publication page’s own update history is the cleanest confirmation you will find: an entry dated 1 September 2026 records that the revised guidance took effect and that the obsolete version was removed.

The press release that announced it left no wriggle room on timing. Schools “can begin following the guidance from the new school year and it must be followed from September 2026”. As of this term, it is not optional.

It also covers more schools than people expect. The guidance applies to governing bodies of maintained schools and non-maintained special schools, trustees or directors of academies and free schools, proprietors of independent schools, and management committees of pupil referral units. If you pay fees, this still applies to your child’s school.

One more thing, and it matters more than anything else here. This is England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own relationships and health education, and nothing in this document reaches them. If your child is at school in Cardiff, Glasgow or Belfast, the date above is not your date.

The AI strand, in the government’s own words

The government’s response to its Growing up in the online world consultation, published on 19 August 2026, describes the change like this: “From September 2026, strengthened Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) guidance will support children to think critically about emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and AI chatbots.” The same document says children will “be taught about the prevalence and harms of deepfakes, misinformation and disinformation”.

The most specific account sits in a separate government paper, A Safe, Informed Digital Nation, published on 16 March 2026. It states that the DfE’s RSHE guidance requires secondary school pupils to learn about:

the prevalence of deepfakes, including videos and photos
how deepfakes can be used maliciously as well as for entertainment
the harms that can be caused by deepfakes
how to identify them

That same paper summarises the revision as guidance which “now includes content on AI (including deepfakes), explains how social media works, and provides guidance on countering sexual health misinformation”.

Read those together and the shape is clear enough. This is not a computing topic that has wandered into the wrong document. It is online safety and critical judgement: what a generated image is, who makes one, why they bother, and how you would tell.

If your child is in primary, this changes less than the headlines suggest

Every official statement I could confirm that attaches a phase to the AI and deepfake content attaches it to secondary. A Safe, Informed Digital Nation says “secondary school pupils”. The DfE press release describes children who “start to build positive attitudes to relationships between friends and family in primary school, followed by new dedicated content in secondary school”, and states that “the clear dividing line between what can be taught in primary and secondary school remains unchanged”.

I want to be straight about the limit of that. The guidance itself is published on gov.uk as a 47 page PDF and nothing else, so what I am quoting above is the government describing its own document rather than the document itself. I could not read a primary specific AI requirement out of an official source, so I am not going to tell you there is one, and I would treat any article that does with suspicion unless it quotes a paragraph number.

What that leaves is this. A primary school is free to lay the groundwork, and plenty will, because online relationships and internet safety have been in the guidance for years and generated images fold into that naturally. But if you were expecting a deepfake lesson in Year 4 this term because of something you read in the summer, the rule does not require one.

What you can ask to see, and what the school owes you

There are two different things here, with two different strengths, and the difference is worth knowing before you email anyone.

The first is statutory. Regulations made under the Children and Social Work Act 2017, which received Royal Assent on 27 April 2017, require proprietors of schools “to make statements of policy in relation to the education to be provided, and to make the statements available to parents or other persons”. Your school’s written RSE policy is something you are entitled to read. You are not asking a favour.

The second is guidance rather than law, and the DfE put it plainly when the revision was announced: parents “should be able to view all RSHE curriculum materials on request”, and schools “should not agree to any contractual restrictions on showing parents any content that the school will use”. That second half is aimed at external providers who sell lesson packs with confidentiality terms attached. The DfE’s own note for parents repeats the first half word for word.

So a useful email is short and names what it wants: the current RSE policy and the date it was last reviewed, the year group the online safety and AI content sits in, and a sample of the resources. Ask for a sample rather than for everything, and you will get an answer faster.

The bit worth doing at home: check one AI answer together

The guidance’s own phrase is thinking critically about the technology. Here is the primary sized version of that, and it takes ten minutes on a Saturday.

Pick a question you already know the answer to, from something your child did this term. Ask a chatbot. Then hand your child the answer and let them mark it, with a pen, the way a teacher would. The point is the reversal: they are the one grading, and the machine is the one being checked.

Then ask two follow up questions out loud. Where did that come from, and how would we find out? A chatbot that cannot name a source has told you something useful. Ask the same question again in a fresh session a day later and compare the two answers, because the gap between them is the plainest demonstration of confident guessing a child will get.

None of this needs the secondary content, and none of it requires you to have an opinion about AI. It builds the one habit the guidance is after, which is that a fluent answer and a correct answer are not the same object. That habit is also what makes a too good photograph easier to doubt three years later.

I wrote up a weekend routine for checking what actually stuck if you want a version that covers the whole week rather than one question.

Frequently asked questions

Does the new RSHE guidance apply in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

No. It is Department for Education statutory guidance for England, and it applies to maintained schools, non-maintained special schools, academies and free schools, independent schools and pupil referral units in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland set their own relationships and health education, so neither the 1 September 2026 date nor the content described here applies there.

When did the new RSHE guidance come into force?

1 September 2026. It was published on 15 July 2025 for introduction a year later, and the gov.uk publication page carries an update dated 1 September 2026 noting that the revised guidance took effect and the obsolete version was removed. The DfE press release said schools could start following it earlier, but that it must be followed from September 2026.

Do primary schools have to teach about deepfakes from September 2026?

The official material that names a phase names secondary. A Safe, Informed Digital Nation, published 16 March 2026, says the RSHE guidance requires secondary school pupils to learn about the prevalence of deepfakes, how they are used, the harms they cause and how to identify them. The DfE also says the dividing line between primary and secondary content is unchanged. A primary school can cover related online safety ground if it judges that appropriate, but I could not confirm a primary specific AI requirement at an official source.

Can I see the RSHE materials my child’s school uses?

You can ask, and the DfE has said you should be able to. Its July 2025 announcement stated that parents should be able to view all RSHE curriculum materials on request, and that schools should not agree to contractual restrictions on showing parents content the school will use. Separately, the law requires schools to make a policy statement about this education available to parents, so the written RSE policy is the item you can insist on rather than request.