CONSENT and respectful relationships education should be extended through to Year 12, according to the co-founder of Perth-based charity We Are W/M.

Kate Raston, who was Fremantle’s Young Citizen of the Year in 2024 and a national nominee in the same year,  said while it was a big change, and came when students were expected to be focused on their final year topics, young people were crying out for more information.

It’s also a time that many are increasingly interacting with a murky online world where the influences of Andrew Tate and his “manosphere” are prevalent.

•Kate Raston

We Are W/M is a Western Australian not-for-profit organisation delivering consent, healthy relationships and body autonomy education to students, young adults and parents. The charity was founded during Covid period by Ms Raston and Nicole Beard and works with schools across Perth and regional WA.

“Essentially we started off the back of the realisation that there was a massive lack of education for young people, particularly in Western Australia, around consent, healthy body autonomy, healthy relationships — all sorts of things that really tie into preventing gender based violence,” Ms Raston said.

The absence of this element of a student’s education was surprising given social change over the past two decades.

“We truly believe that this education is a basic human right.”

She said it was encouraging, and perhaps a rare fillip to social media, that students were showing more understanding about consent, but they lacked practical communication skills.

“They can tell you that it is important. They can tell you that it’s needed. But they really struggle on ‘when push comes to shove, what do I actually say or when’.

“We’re trying to give them realistic skills.”

We Are W/M programs involve role-playing and discussion, with a strong focus on trauma-informed delivery.

“Yes they can,” Ms Raston said when asked whether sessions sometimes became intense.

“Everything that we deliver is trauma informed, so we don’t want to traumatise someone but we also don’t want someone in the room to traumatise somebody else.”

She said discussions with boys around masculinity were particularly important.

“Those discussions can get quite… spirited, but they’re very important conversations.”

Ms Raston said harmful ideas often spread peer-to-peer rather than directly from online influencers.

“I think the overwhelming response is that it’s not necessarily coming from your Andrew Tates, but coming from their mates.”

She said many students struggled to speak out when values were challenged.

“It’s really hard to speak out against the norm, particularly when you’re just figuring out for yourself where you stand in the world.”

We Are W/M delivers programs from Year 7 through to Year 12, as well as sessions for parents and young adults, although most school bookings are for Year 9 and 10 students.

“All our programs are from about year 7 all the way up through through high school.”

Ms Raston said early education was critical.

“The research shows us the earlier the better.”

She said uptake depended largely on schools choosing to book the programs.

“We are reliance on the schools having us come into their classroom and teach.”

“I want more. I want to do more because we know that when you do more you have better outcomes.”

Ms Raston said education was a key part of preventing domestic violence.

“Prevention is a major part in slowing down the rates of domestic violence and education is a piece of that puzzle.”

by STEVE GRANT