Advanced RSE Training Course

This advanced RSE training course is for RSE / CSE practitioners who would like to spend some time learning about some of the core themes in (Comprehensive) Relationships and Sexuality Education in some depth. If you regularly deliver RSE, or support people around it in one-to-ones or group work, then this is for you. So: outreach workers, youth workers, PSHE coordinators, training leads, therapists, health advisers, activists, etc.

About

The processes of this advanced RSE training course will model the critical pedagogy that the very best practice RSE delivers. That is: consensual, participatory, interactive, and experiential.

As with all of my work, it is feminist, trans inclusive, pro-sex worker rights, and grounded in anti-(dis)ablism and anti-oppression and the potential for different oppressions to interlock more generally. However, as I have shown with my work at BISH, the real trick for RSE is how to make it include everyone. How can RSE work for (for example) queer folk, as well as straight and cis folk? How do we facilitate RSE where men value it just as much as women? What role can good inclusive RSE play in building solidarity, rather than making people feel bad, guilty and closed off?

RSE gets stuck when we become too concerned about ‘what something is’ rather than ‘what something does, how we do it, and what else that does’. Through this training I will explain to you how I approach RSE in my in-person practice but also at BISH in order to help us overcome many of the unhelpful binaries we can get stuck in. Nature vs nurture. Risk vs pleasure. Body vs mind. We will do this by drawing on the very practical philosophies of materialism, affect theory, assemblages, and micropolitics.

Please don’t be put off by this high falutin’ intro. It’s also an extremely practical, down to earth, and accessible course. I developed it, yes me, Justin Hancock. I’m an extremely experienced RSE practitioner, working in this field since 1999, and trained by Carol Painter on the acclaimed Training The Trainers in Sexual Health course at the Sheffield Centre for HIV and Sexual Health in 2003. I’ve also learnt how to bring theory into RSE work and why that is valuable. I hope that you will learn something from the theory, but the most important is that we learn from each other and the new ways of thinking that we will generate.

Content of the Advanced RSE Training Course

Over this 6 day course we will cover:

Sex Education

Exploring the messages we receive about sex (discourses). What they do. How these discourses are passed on. The traps that RSE falls into, and what it is we need to actually do. 

The Self

Developing an understanding of ‘the self’. From (neo)liberal discourses of self-reliance and efficacy, to an intersectional and material critique of ‘the self’. An introduction to ‘affect’ and the self as an assemblage. 

Gender

We will explore gender as ‘molar and molecular’ and how we experience our everyday genderings and lines of flight and possible becomings.

Sexuality

Taking some of the learning from the module on gender we will also learn together about the possibilities for ‘uniqueness’ in sexuality. What the possibilities for sexualities are (including asexuality) and working towards a holistic and solidaristic model for sexuality. 

Relationships

We will critically explore the discourses of romantic relationships, ‘enamoration’, ‘micro-moments of positivity resonance’, love as a possible ‘line of flight’, how platforms organise romantic desire, the idea of a healthy relationship, how to teach about relationships when we are ourselves doing relationships (and sometimes struggling with them).

Consent

Moving beyond the binary consent discourses of permission we will learn practical examples of how we maximise our freedoms to choose to agree in everyday life. We will learn how these tools of consent have the potential to be liberatory. When we are doing things consensually, what are we doing, how are we doing it and what (else) does that do?

Sex (including safer sex and pleasure)

Reflecting on our own sex education we will seek to understand and overcome the risk / pleasure dialectic of sex. Through a holistic understanding of what sex is, but more importantly, what sex might do

The Sex We See

Moving away from theories of ‘effect’ and questions of causality, we will understand the sex we see (porn, TV, social media) as part of the affective flow of what constitutes sexual knowledge. Just as porn is not sex ed, why porn is a problem for sex ed and what we can appropriately do to meet these challenges.

Bodies

Beginning with an intersectional feminist critique of how our bodies are rendered and produced in culture, we will also learn about embodiment, the materialdiscursive body, and ‘the body without organs.’

Fantasy, desire, and becomings

We will bring together what we have learnt in the course in order to critique the mind / body and subject / object split. Instead looking at more materialist ways of thinking about desire and ‘drives’. We will also overview how to make RSE a becoming ….

What participants say about the course

“I completed Justin Hancock’s Advanced Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) about course two years ago, and it remains one of the most valuable professional development experiences I’ve ever undertaken.

The course was deeply reflective, intellectually engaging, and grounded in a thoughtful, evidence-based approach to relationships and sexuality education. Justin creates a learning environment that is both challenging and supportive, inviting participants to think critically about power, pleasure, and pedagogy while reflecting on their own practice.

What stood out most was Justin’s ability to balance rigour with warmth and humour, ensuring that even complex or confronting topics felt accessible and meaningful. I left the course with a renewed sense of purpose, sharper facilitation skills, and a deeper understanding of how to engage learners in transformative, inclusive conversations about sexuality and relationships.

I couldn’t recommend the Advanced RSE course more highly to anyone committed to high-quality, reflective, and progressive sexuality education.”

Jana Gomes, Nationally Accredited Sexuality Educator

“Highly recommend Justin’s RSE training course. It was an important reminder of how it feels to be the student answering questions about relationships and sexuality. It also provides excellent tools and insights to strengthen your practice and resource young people to live happier and healthier lives.”

How we will work together

Despite how theoretical this all sounds, it will all be very accessible, fun, interactive, and using everyday language. In fact, to see a version of this course that I’ve developed for young people head to the Teach Yourself Sex Ed resources at BISH. 

It would be on zoom but it would be very interactive and as near to being in a training room with me in person as possible. I’ve done a bit of this now and it’s worked really well (and sometimes better than in person training). 

I’m thinking that each section would have one or two interactive activities to take part in in break out rooms, lots of room for discussion etc. I will also facilitate using white boards and shared docs where we can keep our notes, ideas, links to things, and resources we might develop along the way. There will also be lots of resources from me

Next Dates for Advanced RSE

As you can see, I’m now making it a 6 day course. That 6th day gives us a chance to ask questions and practise using some of the resources that you will get from the Big BISH Download. Still the same price.

October 2026

This time we’re doing Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays 13th, 14th, 15th and 20th, 21st, 22nd October from 10 – 4.30pm (UK time) on Zoom. Book by 31st July and grab an early-bird discount of 5%.

To Book

The fee is £750 (for the full course). To reserve a place just email me to confirm. Contact me via the contact page or directly bishtraining at gmail dot com.

I’m afraid I have had to drop my sliding scale initiative for the course but if you really don’t have the budget but really want to do the course, send me a message and we can try and agree a fee.