School Tackling Sexual Harassment

Pen-Y-Dre high school students in Merthyr Tydfil have been sharing their experiences of sexual harassment in school, and coming up with ways to talk about it safely.

MPs recently criticised schools for not taking sexual harassment seriously enough, but this school in South Wales have been tackling the problem in force.

Chloe and Libby, both in year 11, have started to take part in the Relationship Matters project. Libby said “We started to realise what was right and wrong and it snowballed from there.” Quite a few year 11 students are taking part in the project, and is designed to make women feel safe when addressing sexual harassment and sexual violence.

A recent report by the Women and Equalities committee suggests that girls as young as 16 can experience “unwanted sexual touching” in schools.

“It’s not just name calling, there’s actual physical harassment now,” Libby explains. The project is a way of helping a number of young girls deem what is “actually right and wrong”, and is being led by Emma Reynold, professor of childhood studies at Cardiff University.

Over the past three years, there were more than 5,500 alleged sex crimes in UK schools reported to the police, and three-quarters of young women in schools say they suffer from anxiety because of sexual harassment.

One of the many aims of the project is to provide students with an alternative space to talk about the issues that affect them.

Libby said that online abuse can be the most difficult to handle.

The very fact that the general consensus for harassment seems to be “it just happens” is appalling. Jane Lees from the Sex Education Forum said that sexual education should compulsory, and that it would teach children appropriate behaviour and reduce violence of a sexual nature and coercion.

Many students would agree that sexual education isn’t exactly well explained in schools. Education on the birds and the bees and relationships is, according to Bristol University, “negative, heterosexist and out of touch”, with poorly trained teachers too embarrassed to talk about it.

Personally I think we should enforce this kind of teaching:

*Guy touches you inappropriately*

Just saying. Teach young women ninjutsu and that’d solve your problem.