As part of the year 7-10 Personal Development, Health and Education syllabus, students will be taught “the knowledge, understanding and skills to help prevent domestic violence”.

Last year Rutherford Technology High School fought to save a revolutionary program – ‘Love Bites’ – aimed at preventing domestic violence and sexual assault across Maitland.

But with the program now defunct students have welcomed the inclusion of domestic violence prevention to the syllabus.

“This is something that needs to be done,” year 10 student Ashley Fry said.

“We need an educational program to make us aware of unhealthy behaviour patterns because at the moment domestic violence isn’t something people want to discuss.

“But by bringing the issue into the schools as a subject then we can start a conversation that needs to be started . . . it would make it OK to talk about it.”

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The impetus for change stems from the plight of a teenage girl who wrote to the NSW Government – weeks after the suicide death of her mother – asking them to “educate children about domestic violence and how to seek help.”

Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Pru Goward then took up the cause saying: “Through this update to the syllabus, schools can provide a 

significant platform for helping young people to identify, report and protect themselves and others from abuse.”

“This is a very confronting issue so we have to be careful how it is discussed,” Declan Johnson, also in year 10, said. 

“But it’s not only women and children who are affected by this, men also have to deal with it. It isn’t a one-sided issue.

“I do think something like this would overwhelm primary school children but we are the right age to understand it.”