According to a survey published by Plan International last month 58% of girls aged 14 to 21 say they have been publicly sexually harassed in their learning environment.
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Ofsted says action needs to be taken following the exposure of sexual harassment in London’s top private schools.
The Office for Standards in Education visited 32 state and private schools and colleges. They spoke to over 900 students about the prevalence of sexual harassment in their lives and their peers.
The report found around 9 in 10 girls said that sexist name-calling and receiving unwanted explicit content happened ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’.
Inspectors were also told that boys talk about whose ‘nudes’ they have and share them among themselves. This is described as a ‘collection game’, typically on platforms like WhatsApp or Snapchat.
The review recommends that school and college leaders act on the assumption that sexual harassment is affecting all pupils. Taking a whole-school approach to address these issues creates a culture where sexual harassment is not tolerated.
Open letter of sexual harassment
The report comes after activist Zan Moon sent an open letter to 10 schools. This included 95 testimonies from victims exposing alleged misogynistic culture in London’s top private schools.
The 24-year-old, former Benenden student sent a request on social media. “She asked if others had suffered anything similar to students from two fee-paying schools, Eton and Tonbridge.
Moon was expecting a handful of replies but received a tidal wave of allegations.
She included anonymised versions of these accounts in her open letter to eight private schools, including Eton College.
The letter stated that the ‘chauvinism’ which ‘runs deep inside the UK’s private boys schools’ needs to ‘end now’.
‘How can we use social media to fight back?’
`Moon set up an Instagram page @screengrabthem to expose screenshots of online harassment, misogyny, and coercion. She aims to show this is what women experience daily.
Within her posts, she tags the various schools allegedly involved in the claims.
She said, “I had lots of conversations with journalists and schools. Journalists who I found were still questioning the validity of some of the testimonies young girls had come forward with.”
“For far too long social media has been part of the problem. I just thought how can we use social media to fight back.”
“I asked people to chat search buzzwords that I knew would bring results. After that, messages came flooding in of different conversations where sexual harassment had been personified on screen.”
‘Zero tolerance policy’
She said, “there needs to be an absolute zero-tolerance policy to any form of misogyny and sexist comments”.
Moon is calling for government change to make sex education a stand-alone subject. She states that “those who do offend need to educated not just punished”.
Miss Moon said students should have in-depth interactive workshops with specialists on a weekly basis. She says this will make begin to address the findings in the Ofsted sexual harassment report.
HeadlineOfsted: sexual harassment culture change needed to tackle ‘normalised’ culture in London schools and colleges
Short HeadlineOfsted calls for London schools to tackle harassment
StandfirstOfsted report comes after an open letter to London’s top private schools exposing deep-rooted sexual harassment.
Ofsted says action needs to be taken following the exposure of sexual harassment in London’s top private schools.
The Office for Standards in Education visited 32 state and private schools and colleges. They spoke to over 900 students about the prevalence of sexual harassment in their lives and their peers.
The report found around 9 in 10 girls said that sexist name-calling and receiving unwanted explicit content happened ‘a lot’ or ‘sometimes’.
Inspectors were also told that boys talk about whose ‘nudes’ they have and share them among themselves. This is described as a ‘collection game’, typically on platforms like WhatsApp or Snapchat.
The review recommends that school and college leaders act on the assumption that sexual harassment is affecting all pupils. Taking a whole-school approach to address these issues creates a culture where sexual harassment is not tolerated.
Open letter of sexual harassment
The report comes after activist Zan Moon sent an open letter to 10 schools. This included 95 testimonies from victims exposing alleged misogynistic culture in London’s top private schools.
The 24-year-old, former Benenden student sent a request on social media. “She asked if others had suffered anything similar to students from two fee-paying schools, Eton and Tonbridge.
Moon was expecting a handful of replies but received a tidal wave of allegations.
She included anonymised versions of these accounts in her open letter to eight private schools, including Eton College.
The letter stated that the ‘chauvinism’ which ‘runs deep inside the UK’s private boys schools’ needs to ‘end now’.
‘How can we use social media to fight back?’
`Moon set up an Instagram page @screengrabthem to expose screenshots of online harassment, misogyny, and coercion. She aims to show this is what women experience daily.
Within her posts, she tags the various schools allegedly involved in the claims.
She said, “I had lots of conversations with journalists and schools. Journalists who I found were still questioning the validity of some of the testimonies young girls had come forward with.”
“For far too long social media has been part of the problem. I just thought how can we use social media to fight back.”
“I asked people to chat search buzzwords that I knew would bring results. After that, messages came flooding in of different conversations where sexual harassment had been personified on screen.”
‘Zero tolerance policy’
She said, “there needs to be an absolute zero-tolerance policy to any form of misogyny and sexist comments”.
Moon is calling for government change to make sex education a stand-alone subject. She states that “those who do offend need to educated not just punished”.
Miss Moon said students should have in-depth interactive workshops with specialists on a weekly basis. She says this will make begin to address the findings in the Ofsted sexual harassment report.
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