Peter Shreeve, Assistant District Secretary of the National Education Union, shares this response to the Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges. In his own words, Ed
The Ofsted report reveals how prevalent sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are for children and young people. They said sexual harassment “occurs so frequently that it has become ‘commonplace'”.
When Ofsted asked children and young people where sexual violence occurred, they typically talked about unsupervised spaces outside of school, such as parties or parks without adults present. The proliferation of online imagery, partially attributed to the sharing of ‘self-generated’ content involving young people is of concern and is rising.
Urgently need to prevent sexual harassment in schools
Sexual harassment is still trivialised and normalised throughout society. We urgently need to boost the focus around both preventing and responding to the sexual harassment which happens in every school and college.
Listening actively to girls and women staff is crucial.
More time for Relationship, Sex and Health Education
The NEU welcomes Ofsted highlighting that insufficient time is given to the subject of Relationship, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) and the importance Ofsted places on high-quality training for teachers delivering.
This is about getting the balance in the curriculum right. Proper support for schools to introduce the new RSHE curriculum can’t be done on the cheap.
Teachers in the review shared their concerns about being asked to teach outside their subject specialism and we would like the Department for Education to engage with this staffing challenge.
A whole-school approach to tackling sexism needed
Ofsted talk about the culture in schools and we agree a whole-school approach to tackling sexism is required.
This challenge should not be underestimated, as the report reveals children and young people, especially girls, are reluctant to talk about sexual abuse, even where their school encourages reporting.
We support a much greater focus on sexual harassment in schools using the whole curriculum. Students must feel empowered to discuss and learn about sexism, report incidents and take action for equality.
One-off lessons are not the answer
The DfE can play its part by showing better leadership in terms of the curriculum response and must increase its focus on the social aspects of learning.
Many curriculum reviews in other countries have done so. One-off lessons are not the answer – we need training, and guidance, to build staff capacity to understand, identify and tackle sexism on an ongoing basis. There is very little on this in teacher training currently.
Image: summerskyephotography under CC BY 2.0
