Schools should receive a “yearly safeguarding audit” to ensure pupils are looked after, a teacher leader has told MPs.
In a women and equalities committee hearing on attitudes to girls and women in schools and other educational settings, Keziah Featherstone, headteacher at Q3 Academy Tipton, in the West Midlands, said there should be a yearly safeguarding audit of schools, separate from Ofsted inspections, to investigate issues of harassment.
Ms Featherstone, who is also a co-founder and national leader of WomenEd and a member of the Headteachers’ Roundtable group, said that Ofsted should “decouple safeguarding” from the “main inspection framework” so the inspection body can monitor “how well” schools are “looking after their pupils”.
She said she knew of schools in the West Midlands that had not been seen by Ofsted inspectors for 12 years.
Susie McDonald, chief executive of charity Tender - an arts charity working with young people to prevent domestic abuse and sexual violence - told the committee of MPs that there is no “clear guidance for schools about how to manage incidents” of misogyny and abuse.
She said that because of a lack of guidance, teachers will try to support the alleged perpetrator and the victim, and do not always hold boys accountable for abusive behaviour if police do not proceed with a criminal case.
The committee was also told how pupils have AirDropped nudes to each other or used Google Drive to store non-consensually shared images. (AirDrop is a service that allows Apple users to wirelessly transfer photographs and videos between their devices, including iPhones.)
Soma Sara, founder and chief executive of Everyone’s Invited (EI), a movement against sexual violence, said that pupils socialise at house parties and after school, and it is “very challenging” for teachers to “get a hold on behaviour that is happening outside of school and also on young people’s phones”.
EI offers a platform on which people can anonymously post about their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse.
Ms Sara said “the rise and the mainstreaming of hardcore pornography”, and the ways in which young people conduct much of their lives online, have led to new kinds of abuse emerging in recent years.
“A lot of young people I’ve spoken to, they don’t really understand that it’s wrong or understand the impact it’s actually having on them,” she said.
“It’s just become so normalised that it’s accepted as what happens.”
Ms Sara said when young people try to report harassment and abuse, they are told to “shrug it off and move on”, which serves to “perpetuate that same cycle of abuse”.
Ms Sara said the victims of online and in-person misogyny and abuse are predominantly women and girls but can be men and boys, too - with male sexual abuse more “stigmatised”.
Last year, Tes revealed that almost half of teachers felt there was insufficient official guidance for schools on how to deal with allegations of sexual harassment and violence.
A Government spokesperson said: “Keeping children safe online is at the heart of our work to tackle sexual abuse and harassment of all kinds.
“Since the Ofsted Review, we have updated safeguarding guidance, including specifically on responding to incidents involving nude or semi-nude images, and we have provided new resources and training for teachers aimed at equipping them to deal with sensitive discussions with their pupils.
“The Online Safety Bill will strengthen protections for children online even further, helping to make Britain the safest place in the world to be online.
“This will introduce a statutory duty of care on companies to take steps to protect their users from harm, including child sexual exploitation and abuse.”
