Teachers 'struggle to deal with classroom sexual abuse'- BBC headline

[Leafstamp]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57231920

A useful read, especially with RSE consultations being topical.

Many are also unsure how to deliver elements of a new sex-and-relationships curriculum, which the government says third parties might now help with.

Sexual abuse is a crime so I think it needs more than a classroom teacher to deal with it. Teachers are not trained in this area so maybe the government actually needs to create roles for schools with people who are trained in this area if it is being highlighted as a problem.

We hear so much about inappropriate programmes in schools: can anyone recommend good ones that teach respect and consent?

I agree Russell. However, are skills dealing with other crimes in school transferable I wonder? Drugs, physical abuse etc.

I know our large secondary has a whole host of pastoral staff, maybe PCSOs should join these ranks, even if just to show their face once a week or something? Or does this already happen?

No one wants to deal with this. The hoards of pastoral staff who should be involved will probably run a mile, so another job will have to be created.

I am hoping the consultation on VAWG will bear fruit. When I filled in the questionnaire, I talked about what girls had to tolerate and I assume many more people said the same.

When you have companies who design and deliver RSE resources standing up for porn, (eg BISH) which is a major driver (they argue to the nth degree it's not) how can we trust 3rd parties?

Operation Encompass was a police - school initiative for domestic violence.

Unsure of it's eventual effectiveness, it included lessons from the police on respect and relationships and bullying, but something like that would be less open to queering abuse.

The starting point has to be changing the culture of the school.
Fixating on the length of girls skirts. Somehow blaming girls when boys are shit to them. Not being aware or not seeing (maybe choosing not to?) what’s going on in front of them. The misogyny that is going unchallenged. This isn’t about isolated incidents that go unreported (because it’s ‘normal’) and so the schools fail to act. They need to be making fundamental changes so the behaviour doesn’t happen.

I’ve raised all this with our secondary school. I still don’t think they really get it. We’ve had lengthy conversations where I’ve reminded them they are children, not young adults, and no matter how much they insist they want to be treated as adults, we mustn’t lose sight of it.

This doesn’t surprise me unfortunately. Do Teaching unions and government departments and local authorities provide clear guidance already? How do we change this?

It's getting worse, yet they still insist on removing single sex spaces.

Teaching about coercive control, gaslighting, emotional blackmail, consent and boundaries whilst simultaneously removing the boundaries and consent of female pupils and using coercive control, gaslighting and emotional blackmail to insert male pupils with gender feelings into their safe spaces.

Exactly, Whatsnewpussyhat

@0hforfoxsake 'We’ve had lengthy conversations where I’ve reminded them they are children, not young adults, and no matter how much they insist they want to be treated as adults, we mustn’t lose sight of it.'

That's an interesting point about the language shift. When I was young, we were 'teenagers' and 'pupils'. Now the same age group is called 'young adults' and 'student', the latter a word previously used for university only. We were considered adults at 21. And yet if anything this generation is more immature as teenagers than ours, in many respects very sheltered, but routinely exposed to extreme misogynistic and violent imagery online, the sort of thing my generation might only come across in a damp magazine stashed in bushes in the park.

The more I think about this, the angrier I get. It’s school!!!!! Girls (and all children and teachers too) should be safe there, and free to learn and mature in their own time and at their own pace into their full potential as individuals without being sexually assaulted or harassed.
I was a governor for a time at my kids’ primary and am now considering volunteering to do the same at their secondary. Most schools are crying out for governors, and there are specific safeguarding positions available. You do not need to have any educational work experience. I think the more of us who do that the better at the moment - we might then have some way to actually change things.

Exactly. As I said to the school, they are living in a pornified culture - schools and parents need to provide an antidote for that. It’s all very well lecturing children about consent & respect, but that’s not what they are submerged in. Social media has transformed teenagers experience of life, and we need to change accordingly. That means opening our eyes to it, and providing an alternative experience.

Kids have levels of anxiety never seen before. Self-harming. We’re reacting to problems, not making changes.

It’s us adults that need to step up, and step in. We need to watch what is happening in front of us. It shouldn’t be up to my daughter to approach a teacher, report one of her peers for making a rape joke, explain what he said. It shouldn’t have occurred to him in the first place.

www.ourstreetsnow.org/

This is a link to Our Streets Now. It might be useful for schools to be aware of the movement.

It’s got to be about zero tolerance. In the classroom, in the streets, everywhere.

Young adults to me are 18-24.
The push to treat adolescents like adults creates this idea that they are emotionally mature enough to consent to all the things they are now being exposed to.

this is awful

Worrying reference to Stonewall at the end of this excerpt, as an example of a potential third-party 'helping hand':

"Many are also unsure how to deliver elements of a new sex-and-relationships curriculum, which the government says third parties might now help with.

Children's Minister Vicky Ford said: "We've seen these enormously worrying and very shocking allegations that have come through the Everyone's Invited site.
"One of the things that Ofsted will be looking at in this review is, are schools getting enough training and support? Do they need, for example, third parties to come in and train elements of that curriculum?"
Could be a vocational opening there.... If not us, then Stonewall."

I know that teachers aren't trained to deal with this, but I hear about cases such as girls being forced to sit next to boys they have accused of rape, and I wonder If the school would allow that to happen if it was a case of bullying.

Letting this slide because you've had no training and doing nothing at all should be a safeguarding red flag.

When I was at school, I was assaulted in class. I was constantly being harassed during the lesson for weeks and I don't believe the teacher didn't notice this. As a teacher myself, repeated harrassment like this would not have slipped by me. I have always felt that she failed me.

Eventually the police got involved and he was expelled. I still remember him waiting outside the girls toilets for me - just one of the reasons I am so in favour of single sex toilets. I even stopped going to school and didn't tell my parents until they found out. I have a degree and a good life now but my life came very close to being derailed. I fully support a better approach.

The school also tried to convince me to go back to school and told me I would be seated in a different part of the class from this boy who had assaulted me and threatened me with rape.

I refused and refused and eventually they allowed me to drop the class. I was completely traumatised and it was handled badly.

That’s awful, Maria.

@thepuredrop It's something I don't speak about it ever.

I haven't even told partners - I think I buried it. I actually started suffering from mild depression during #metoo and had to come off social media for a while as it brought up a lot of emotions. I bet a lot of women and girls experienced that. It really is everywhere.

I’m so sorry that that happened to you Maria

We need single sex schools. In a world permeated with porn and increasingly unable to offer justice to victims of rape and sexual abuse, we need to educate boys and girls separately. Girls need to be educated about the effects of porn culture on them, to have self-esteem and to be able to excel and be themselves without being regulated by the male gaze. I don't know what you need to teach boys, but not what they're currently learning, clearly.

Porn isn't going to go away. Most 14-year-olds seem to have seen stuff that I didn't even know about until I was in my late 20s and 30s — and then I didn't actually see it.

@Whatsnewpussyhat

It's getting worse, yet they still insist on removing single sex spaces.

Teaching about coercive control, gaslighting, emotional blackmail, consent and boundaries whilst simultaneously removing the boundaries and consent of female pupils and using coercive control, gaslighting and emotional blackmail to insert male pupils with gender feelings into their safe spaces.

Exactly this.

That article - just one mention of girls and women in relation to the everyone's invited website. Come on! How will yoi even begin to address the problem when you are ignoring what it is!!!