‘A huge win’: can sexual consent programs in schools make the change we need?

Consent and respect programs give boys a judgment-free space to have ‘messy’ conversations that build emotional intelligence, advocates say. Photograph: skynesher/Getty Images

Last term, when Andrew Taukolo handed teenage boys worksheets featuring tropes about sexual assault and abuse and asked them to consider if the statements were fact or myth, he noticed this cohort had a different response to those previous.

The boys, aged 13-18 and sitting in a circle in a Queensland classroom, read through statements such as: “Women like to exaggerate how bad abuse is”; “Abuse only happens when a man is provoked by a woman”; “If the abuse was really that bad, then the woman would leave”.