Sexual harassment has become “normalised” in schools, Ofsted warns

Sexual harassment has become so normal in schools and colleges that children no longer see the point of reporting it, a damning investigation by Ofsted has warned.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson asked Ofsted to launch the rapid review of sexual harassment in schools in April after thousands of anonymous reports were made to the website Everyone’s Invited.

The watchdog visited 32 state and private schools and colleges and spoke to more than 900 children and young people about the prevalence of sexual harassment in their lives and the lives of their peers.

It found around 90 per cent of the girls and 50 per cent of boys spoken to by inspectors said that being sent unwanted explicit pictures or videos happened “a lot” or “sometimes”. Inspectors were also told that boys sometimes collected “nudes” of the girls and shared them on social media like a “collection game”.

The findings come as a Daily Mail poll of 2,000 young people aged 16 to 21 revealed the shocking levels of sexual harassment in schools and colleges.

Of the girls who took part in the poll, 74 per cent said they have had sexist comments or jokes directed at them, 49 per cent experienced unwanted touching or physical contact and 19 per of those who have had oral sex said it wasn’t consensual.

The poll also found that 40 per cent of girls who have had sex said they had a sex act performed on them when asleep or unconscious.

According to the Ofsted report, children “often don’t see the point of challenging or reporting this harmful behaviour because it’s seen as a normal experience”. Students also told inspectors they feared retaliation from classmates, that the police would become involved or that photos would be shown to parents or teachers.

Ofsted concluded that schools “consistently underestimate” the scale of the problem and that sex education was so out of touch with the reality of children’s lives that pupils turned to social media or their peers for information.

At the end of their eight-week inquiry, Ofsted inspectors were so struck by the widespread prevalence of the problem they told school leaders to “act on the assumption” that sexual harassment was affecting their pupils, even where there were no complaints.

Presenting the findings from Ofsted’s report, the chief inspector of schools in England, Amanda Spielman, said she was shocked by its findings:

“It’s alarming that many children and young people, particularly girls, feel they have to accept sexual harassment as part of growing up. Whether it’s happening at school or in their social life, they simply don’t feel it’s worth reporting.

“Sexual harassment should never be considered normal and it should have no place in our schools and colleges.”

Ofsted has called on headteachers to take a whole-school approach and develop a culture where all kinds of sexual harassment are addressed and sanctioned.

It calls for sex education to cover consent and sharing explicit images, a guide for children and young people to explain what will happen after they talk to school staff about sexual harassment and abuse and urges the government to take its findings into account as it develops the Online Safety Bill.