Skills for Life: Healthy Relationships
Healthy relationships is a Pearson Skills for Life unit in which learners identify the characteristics of healthy relationships, including consent, boundaries and communication at Level 1 and Level 2, recognise respectful behaviours and demonstrate skills such as active listening and calm, clear communication to build positive relationships. It is one 10 hour unit that learners combine with others into a Pearson Skills for Life Award, Certificate or Diploma, from Entry 1 to Level 2. Digital demand is low: the unit has no online relationships content and Annexe C records no direct digital link. The only digital work is optional poster or infographic making, plus referencing sources and acknowledging any AI used.
- Awarding body
- Pearson
- Level
- Entry Level 1 to Level 2
- Guided learning hours
- 10
- First taught
- September 2027
- Amount of digital work
- Low
- Specification
- Open the specification
How this unit is assessed
- Entry Level (Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3): One assessment criterion at each of Entry 1, Entry 2 and Entry 3: list, outline or identify characteristics of a healthy relationship, from Entry 2 including respectful behaviours, and demonstrate a few, some or a range of skills to build positive relationships. The essential information for assessment decisions sets the number of characteristics, behaviours and skills at each level. Centres choose the type of evidence and set and mark the assessment, adapting Pearson's Authorised Assignment Brief or devising their own, internally verified and quality assured by Pearson standards verification. 10 guided learning hours.
- Level 1 and Level 2: One assessment criterion at each of Level 1 and Level 2: describe (Level 1) or explain with reasons (Level 2) at least four characteristics of a healthy relationship, including consent and boundaries, and at least four respectful behaviours, and demonstrate four or more skills to build positive relationships, adapted at Level 2 to at least four simulated scenarios. Centres choose the type of evidence and set and mark the assessment, internally verified and quality assured by Pearson standards verification. 10 guided learning hours.
Skills that use Digital rights, licensing and ownership
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Referencing sources and acknowledging AI
Learners at every level must certify that their evidence is their own and clearly reference any sources and any AI used, for example websites used to research respectful behaviours or support services. Using AI tools without acknowledging them is malpractice. This applies to all assessed evidence, although the unit itself needs little research.
DCF: Digital rights, licensing and ownership, Sourcing, searching and planning digital content
Getting pupils ready
- Year 7
- Pupils add the name of the website they used for facts about friendship to the bottom of their poster.
- Year 8
- Pupils keep a list of the web pages they used to research respect, with the date they visited each one, and attach it to their work.
- Year 9
- Pupils use an AI tool to suggest role play scenarios, then rewrite one in their own words and add a note saying which tool they used and what they changed.
Show the specification wording and the DCF statements
Where it is in the specification: Unit SfL 15, Requirements relating to permitted/prohibited resources, page 76
“they have clearly referenced any sources and any artificial intelligence used”
Progression step 3
I can understand that copying the work of others and presenting it as my own is plagiarism.
I can cite sources when researching and explain the importance of this, e.g. create simple lists for the referencing of digital and offline sources.
Progression step 4
I can evaluate the reliability of sources of information, justify my opinions and reasons for choices, and reference using appropriate methods.
I can act responsibly as creator and user of creative work, e.g. exploring decisions that creators make when exercising their creative rights and responsibilities, giving consideration to ethical, real-life issues.
Good to know
- The unit is listed as "SfL 15 Healthy relationships" with a Unit GLH of 10 (Unit summary, page 5), half the size of the 20 hour WJEC unit of the same name. It counts towards the Pearson Skills for Life qualifications, for example C00/5444/4 "Pearson Level 1 Skills for Life Award" (Qualification titles, page 4).
- A unit counts only once: "Learners can only achieve each unit once, at a single level" (Rules of Combination, page 6, and Assessment of units, page 9), so schools should decide which level each learner is working towards.
- The required teaching content is not in the specification: it "can be found in the Teaching and Learning Support document for this unit" (Unit content, page 74), so schools need that separate Pearson document as well as the Authorised Assignment Brief.
- Demonstrated skills need a record: "achievement cannot be inferred from performance", and forms of evidence include "observation records, witness testimony, and products of learners' work" (Section 4, page 9). At Level 2 skills are shown in "at least four different simulated scenarios" (Essential information for assessment decisions, Level 2, page 74).
- Level 1 and Level 2 cover consent: learners describe characteristics "including consent and boundaries" (Essential information for assessment decisions, Level 1, page 74), and Annexe D ticks Relationships and Sexuality Education and Diversity for this unit (page 168), so schools should plan it alongside their RSE provision.
- AI must be acknowledged: "A learner will have committed malpractice if they use AI tools without acknowledging them" (Requirements relating to permitted/prohibited resources, page 76).
- The unit contains no online relationships content, and Annexe C records "No direct link" for digital, with "no explicit digital tools/tech tasks" (Annexe C, page 163), unlike the WJEC unit, which covers online harm and reporting.
- The unit says its cross-cutting theme experiences "can be found in Annexe E" (page 76), but Annexe E has no row for SfL 15: the table goes straight from SfL 5 to SfL 18 (page 172).
Links with other qualifications
Healthy relationships links most directly with WJEC GCSE Health and Social Care, and Childcare and the WJEC Foundation in Health and Social Care, and Childcare, which also cover relationships, respectful communication and wellbeing. Within the WJEC Skills Suite it sits next to Mental Health and Wellbeing, Personal Safety, Understanding Self and Others, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Teamwork, and WJEC Online Safety would supply the online relationships content this unit leaves out. Compared with the WJEC Healthy relationships unit, which is 20 hours with four learning outcomes including inclusion, online harm such as cyberbullying and image sharing, and reporting, the Pearson unit is 10 hours with one criterion per level, puts consent and boundaries into Level 1 and Level 2, assesses skills through simulated scenarios and has no digital content.
Source: Pearson Entry Level 1 to Level 2 Skills for Life Award, Certificate and Diploma Qualifications specification, Issue 1, August 2026, Unit SfL 15: Healthy relationships.