Why are schools getting the blame for boys harassing girls?

Delphinium20 and that is why we will never progress. Of course the girls aren't asking for it, but we have allowed a society where girls baring all is to be celebrated. This is not the fault of teenage boys. In media girls that show all are celebrated, the kardashians have hammered it home. Even non conformists such as Ellish have folded.

I became alarmed by the increase in sexualised behaviour and language in school some time between 2000 and 2010, raised it with management on a number of occasions and got brushed off every time. I couldn’t believe they couldn’t see it. I retired from secondary in 2013 and can only imagine it’s got worse since then.

Justajot "in resource terms, it must be a huge challenge."
You're not wrong. A huge part of my regular daily duties as a classroom teacher is to address breaches of behaviour code, mediate, contact parents, log incidents, supervise sanctions etc. I probably spend an hour a day dealing with incidents in just my class, as we take reporting, accountability and conflict resolution very seriously.
And Duck, I think you're barking up the wrong tree with your take on the sexualisation of girls and its many distressing expressions. They are victims of patriarchal socialisation, and that is how it plays out. C'mon.

My primary DD was sexually harassed by a boy in her year from school (not on social media, in real life), not physically, verbally. I reported to the school and they did deal with it as a safeguarding issue.

At the time it struck me that it's feasible for a primary to deal with this occasionally (I think it's not massively common in primary schools), but secondary schools must be absolutely deluged. How practical is it for secondaries to address each incident? I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't or should, but in resource terms, it must be a huge challenge.

Also why do parents allow their girls to post sexualised images?

Why does the girl want to post sexialised images, would be the question I'd be asking.
My answers would be very long but mostly mysogonistic societal attitudes from birth.

Shit, just typed a long response, the bottom line being:
Listening to the Today programme this morning, I found it irritating that the gist seemed to be that boys should not be held accountable for sexual violence against girls until we have somehow managed to educate them otherwise.
I work in a primary school and daily expect quite young pupils to take responsibility for their part in quite complex instances of manipulative, coercive or violent transgressions. They invariably understand exactly how their behaviour or attitude has contributed to a negative outcome. To not expect boys of mainly secondary school age to know that sexual harassment is unacceptable is ridiculous. Of course they know. Every last one of them. But they still do things to female peers which fall into that category. They just don't care enough not to do it.
And I despair at the use of phones in schools. With IT capability and hardware improving in schools all the time, I can not see the need for pupils to have phones during the school day.
Likewise parents who do not closely monitor their kids phones and allow 24:7 access. Just why?

I blame the parents who raise them as much as I blame the boys, who subsequently become the men who egg on the girls. If the girls egg on one another, they are acting under a culture that centers boys, is uninterested in holding boys accountable and excuses their behavior

But can't you see that this view absolves the girls? It's convenient to blame boy children and refuse to acknowledge the role girls have. Refusal to acknowledge helps no one

I've just listened to a report on this on R4 news - at no point at all, in the whole report, did they say who is was that was doing the harassment. Just that girls were the victims of it. Even the girls who were interviewed didn't say it was boys and men who were doing it. If they won't even name it.... I found it so frustrating

And don't get me started on Alistair Stewart on Today this morning talking about the 'good blokes' who 'made a mistake' posting misogynistic and racist tweets

I'm 33, I had a phone when I started secondary school. But all you could do was make calls and text. And texts on PAYG were about 12p a message so didn't take long to eat £5 credit. I remember my first phone with internet. It was crap and cost a fortune to use. I often feel people my age were the guinea pigs a little bit for internet use as our parents had no idea about it really but it just wasn't as bad back then, and we weren't online all the time, had to use the family computer and would regularly be kicked off so mum could make a phone call.

There seems plenty of blame to go around: schools, parents, children themselves, society, lack of internet safety, etc. Just because oftsted is focusing on schools, doesn’t meant they think schools are 100% to blame.

I left school in 1975 and can remember two incidences of boys being suspended from school for sexually assaulting girls. The school took instant action (I don't know if the police were involved). It must be an absolute nightmare for parents nowadays, with everything free and available to see, where children are given laptops, smartphones etc. and are often left unsupervised for hours. Some of the parents are glad to see the back of them, couldn't care less what they are getting up to. The schools have to take responsibility for the actions at school, but the parents have to take a fair share of responsibility for these boys behaviour.

[quote Bunnyfuller]@PlanDeRaccordement schools will absolutely not get involved in behaviour that takes place out of the school/school hours. They stand firm on those times being parental responsibility. The exception is if it’s a bunch of kids clearly pupils of that school, doing something along ASB lines, and getting caught. The school will give the kids a talking to then ‘bringing the school into disrepute’[/quote]
They can and do, see @Delphinium20’s post regarding school actions that were taken in her experience.

It's another multi faceted issue. Schools, society, parents can't fix it alone. It needs support from all corners to change attitudes and protect girls.

Sexual abuse does happen in school. Mysogonistic comments are rife from both sexes. However by far the majority of incidents happen outside of school. This needs dealing with by the police. Yet again lack of funding impacts everywhere.

@Ducksurprise oh definitely. My cousin is 12, her social media accounts say she’s 18 and it’s photos of her and her school friends looking like strippers to be quite honest. Her mum is actually friends with her on fb but doesn’t care less. I find it really awful.

But to solve this we need to talk to our boys and girls

I started a thread in chat suggesting this and got zero responses.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4267401-Sexual-abuse-and-harrassment-rife-among-children-report-finds

"after a report by the schools inspectorate showed that sexual harassment and abuse in schools is so commonplace that pupils don’t bother to report it."

However the Ofsted report says "This rapid thematic review has revealed how prevalent sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are for children and young people. It is concerning that for some children, incidents are so commonplace that they see no point in reporting them."

It also says "When we asked children and young people where sexual violence occurred, they typically talked about unsupervised spaces outside of school, such as parties or parks without adults present, although some girls told us they also experienced unwanted touching in school corridors."

And "In the schools and colleges we visited, some teachers and leaders underestimated the scale of the problem. They either did not identify sexual harassment and sexualised language as problematic or they were unaware they were happening. They were dealing with incidents of sexual violence when they were made aware of them, and following statutory guidance. But professionals consistently underestimated the prevalence of online sexual abuse, even when there was a proactive whole-school approach to tackling sexual harassment and violence."

If children are being sexually harassed and abused online or assaulted outside of school, it should be the police dealing with this, not schools.

I'm not saying that it's not happening at school too, of course not. But that article is misrepresenting the report.

Delphinium20 if you really think that girls only post on Instagram because boys ask then you are naive. They ' choose' to post these pictures, probably because they get lots of likes, but the likes are not just from teenage boys, they are also from their girl friends and less salubrious people