Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to prevent sexual harassment in schools.

Keeping children safe is a top priority for the government. All school and college staff have a responsibility to provide a safe environment in which children can learn, and they should be aware of the various forms of abuse so they are able to identify cases of children in need of help and support.

We have recently updated the statutory Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance. Schools and colleges must have regard to this guidance when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The revised guidance requires schools to ensure their child protection policy covers peer on peer abuse, how the school minimises the risks of it occurring and what to do to deal with any incidents. The guidance also makes it clear that all forms of harassment must be dealt with and must not be dismissed as a joke or a normal part of growing up.

The revised guidance will come into force on 5 September 2016, for the start of the new school year (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2).

We are also clear that bullying, for whatever reason, is absolutely unacceptable. All schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy with measures to prevent all forms of bullying. Ofsted holds schools to account for how well they safeguard children and prevent bullying. As well as looking at schools records of bullying inspectors take into account:

o the views of pupils about the prevention of bullying, including online bullying and how the school deals with discrimination.

o the views expressed formally and informally by different groups of pupils, of their experiences of others’ behaviour and attitudes towards them and their understanding of the importance of such attributes in school and adult life.

Sex and relationships education (SRE) is compulsory in all maintained secondary schools and academies are expected to provide SRE as part of a broad and balanced curriculum.

Any school teaching SRE must have regard to Secretary of State’s Sex and Relationship Education Guidance (2000). The guidance makes clear that all sex and relationship education should be age-appropriate and that schools should ensure young people develop positive values and a moral framework that will guide their decisions, judgments and behaviour.

To support teaching about healthy relationships, the PSHE Association has developed non-statutory guidance for schools about the topic of consent, which was published in March 2015 and can be found at www.pshe-association.org.uk. We strongly welcome this guidance. The PSHE Association’s guidance will help teachers clearly establish the legal framework around consent and supports the government’s ‘This is Abuse’ campaign, which helps educate young people about damaging behaviours within relationships. ‘This is abuse’ was followed up this year by the £3.85 million “Disrespect NoBody” campaign, supported by Government Equalities Office and Home Office. The campaign aims to prevent the onset of domestic violence in adults by challenging attitudes and behaviours amongst teenage boys and girls that abuse in relationships is acceptable.