A Senedd report is calling for everyone in Wales to play a part in changing the culture that allows gender-based violence (GBV) to persist - and highlights the “key role” of schools in preventing violence against women.
However, the report - which describes violence against women as an “epidemic” - questions “whether all schools are allocating sufficient resources to embedding healthy relationships across all aspects of school life” and calls for the schools inspection body Estyn to investigate.
The Equality and Social Justice Committee report, How we must all play our part, also calls for the Welsh government to take immediate action to ensure that teachers are aware of the mandatory reporting in relation to female genital mutilation.
Estyn told the committee that not all teachers were aware of the duty.
The schools’ inspectorate flagged in its submission to the committee last year that, while some schools had well-structured personal and social education programmes that covered healthy relationships, others provided limited opportunities.
The 2021 Estyn report into secondary school pupils’ experiences of peer-on-peer sexual harassment in Wales, We don’t tell our teachers, found that “many pupils across the whole age range say they have not had enough sex and relationships education”.
Funding shortfalls
The committee says it was concerned to hear from the Schools Health Research Network “that some schools choose or can afford to do prevention work and others cannot, particularly in deprived areas”.
It calls for the Estyn thematic review of healthy relationships in schools to look at the availability of resources and training for teachers, as well as verifying “whether there is any link between a lack of provision and higher levels of deprivation”.
The committee also recommends that the review should “identify best practice with regards to ‘whole-school approaches’ to preventing GBV”.
Public-health approach
Equality and Social Justice Committee chair Jenny Rathbone called for the Welsh government to adopt a public-health approach to gender-based violence.
She said: “Two women a week are killed by a former or current partner in England and Wales. A third of women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. Due to under-reporting, it is likely that official figures underestimate the true scale of this shocking problem.”
Ms Rathbone added: “Each victim of this epidemic is a victim too many. To end it, we must all play our part - especially men and boys - by tackling the root causes.”
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