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The implementation of relationships and sexuality education as part of Health and Physical Education in The New Zealand Curriculum (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum. Learning Media Limited.) involves a range of people sharing their perspectives in order to shape the subject on paper and in practice. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative collective case study in three primary schools in Aotearoa. Experimenting with Appreciative Inquiry, we found that connections and conversations between a wide variety of people and organisations have a critical role to play in relation to planning and teaching relationships and sexuality education in schools: (i) Schools and teachers working in partnership with colleagues within and across schools, (ii) connections with whānau and relationships with learners, and (iii) access to wider supports and services. Our findings suggest that having conversations and establishing and maintaining productive partnerships between a variety of people are critical if relationships and sexuality education is to live up to its potential and meet learners’ needs.

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PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has provided us a striking demonstration that the future is dynamic, unpredictable, complex and volatile. It is increasingly important that those working in the field of school-based health education reimagine the possibilities and potential of the subject to rise to the challenges presented and make a difference in learners' worlds. In this paper we explore the potential of health education learning to contribute to aspects of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD's) Learning Compass 2030 from our perspective in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is a learning framework that uses the metaphor of navigation to demonstrate the competencies young people need in order to thrive in the world and has a significant focus on wellbeing for people and society (OECD, 2019).Design/methodology/approachWe explore the links between the learning compass and a socio-critical approach to secondary school-based health education learning opportunities by producing and refining our own knowledge of the learning contexts and experiences that could potentially contribute to the elements of compass. We present this as dialogue produced through asynchronous online conversations between the paper's two authors across a three-month period in 2020 – a method befitting our COVID-19 times.FindingsAfter employing a deductive thematic analysis we found extensive links between health education learning and aspects of the compass which are congruent with the notion that it is more about how the subject is taught than what is covered in a socio-critical health education. We communicate our findings by organising them into three themes that arose for us in analysis: learners' capability to understand the world, navigate the world and change the world.Originality/valueWe conclude the paper with key questions to consider if we are to reimagine school-based health education in order for learning experiences in the subject to enrich learners' understanding of how to navigate the complex and uncertain times they will face across their lives.