Teaching Puberty Before It Happens: A Guide for Primary Schools

A Year 5 teacher told me recently that one of her pupils had started her period at school and was convinced she was dying. Nobody had told her. Not school, not home. She was ten.

That’s the case for teaching puberty before it happens. Not because it’s comfortable, not because parents are asking for it, but because children deserve to understand what’s happening to their bodies before it starts.

When to teach it

Plan it as preparation. The DfE RSHE statutory guidance applying from September 2026 covers growth, adolescence, body names (including nipples, scrotum, testicles, vagina, vulva and penis), and menstruation’s physical and emotional changes before periods start. It names no year group.

Children in one class don’t arrive at puberty together, so the planning question is who is in front of you and when they are likely to need this, then getting the teaching in ahead of that point. One session in one year group won’t hold it. Do a first pass while it’s still abstract for most of them, come back to it with more detail as the cohort moves up, and expect the individual conversations that happen in between.

The PSHE Association’s programme of study for PSHE education offers another planning aid. Its page describes a 2026 edition with suggested learning opportunities for each key stage. Suggested is the word to hold on to: it doesn’t make the decision about your children for you. If you want to review your own programme against the guidance, there’s a step-by-step RSE review on the blog.

What to include

Correct terminology, used without a run-up. Penis, vulva, vagina. Not “front bottom”, not “private parts”. A child who has the words can tell you — or a nurse, or a parent — what is happening and where. A child who doesn’t have the words has to improvise, usually at the worst possible moment.

Menstruation needs to be taught to everyone, not just girls. Boys need to understand what periods are, why they happen, and that they’re ordinary. This isn’t about embarrassing anyone. It’s about building a school culture where menstruation isn’t treated as shameful or mysterious, and you can’t build that if half the year group leaves the room for it.

Cover emotional changes alongside physical ones. Puberty isn’t just about bodies. Mood swings, new feelings, changing friendships — these are the things that often affect children’s day-to-day experience more than the physical changes, especially in the early stages.

Parents can’t withdraw from this

In maintained primaries, academies and free schools, parents cannot withdraw from puberty in health education or science content. For primary sex education outside science, the DfE guidance applying from September 2026 says heads “must automatically grant a request” to withdraw. Other independent schools follow separate PSHE standards.

Work out which side of that line your own content sits on before a parent asks, because the honest answer changes depending on what you’re teaching that week.

That said, parent anxiety about puberty education is usually about uncertainty, not opposition. Most parents are relieved that school is covering this. The ones who push back often just want to know what you’re going to say and when. A short parent information session or a letter home explaining the content and timing goes a long way. Show them the resources you’re using. Answer their questions. In my experience, that kind of transparency takes the heat out of most concerns — not all of them, and some parents will still want a conversation of their own, which is worth making time for.

Making it normal

The biggest gift you can give children in puberty education is normality. Use a matter-of-fact tone. Don’t apologise for the content. Don’t single anyone out. If you treat it as embarrassing, they will too. That also means no naming a child’s development in front of a class and no public guessing about who has started what.

Have period products visible and available in school toilets — for all year groups, not just Year 6. Normalise conversations about bodies in the way you normalise conversations about anything else in school life.

Trusted resources

• DfE: RSHE statutory guidance applying from September 2026.
• PSHE Association: programme of study for PSHE education, key stages 1 to 5.

If you’d like support delivering puberty education in your school, get in touch.