According to the 2017 Girls’ Attitudes Survey produced by Girlguiding UK, 64% of girls aged 13-21 experienced sexual harassment in school, compared to 59% in 2014.

 

The survey is the largest piece of research of its kind in the UK. Within a week’s period, 39% of girls aged 11-21 said that their bra strap had been pulled by boys in school and over a quarter had their skirts lifted by male students.

 

“These numbers have been rising since 2006 and it’s largely due to pornography,” says Child Protection Consultant Ann Marie Christian. “Pre-teens can now access full-blown pornography on their phones and they’re exposed to things they don’t fully understand. They mimic the roles they see played and think it’s the norm.”

 

Ros McNeil is the Assistant General Secretary for Equality and Social Justice at the National Education Union, who released their own report on Sexism in Schools at the end of last year.

 

The report found that one in three teachers witness sexual harassment on at least a weekly basis, but over a quarter were not confident about tackling it.

 

“Sexual harassment in schools is prevalent but not inevitable,” McNeil says. “What was concerning was that teachers didn’t feel able to report it and they weren’t confident it’d be taken seriously. We’ve been conditioned to think this is how boys and girls communicate and this is a social norm, but it isn’t, it’s harmful and limiting.”

 

Although increasing, some argue that the figures still do not represent the full scale of the problem. With the recent #MeToo campaign and heightened awareness around sexual harassment, McNeil thinks we’re making steps in the right direction.

 

“Sometimes when the Girlguiding figures go up it’s a sign of optimism. We’re discussing sexual harassment in every industry at the moment and that encourages reporting, but still, there’s under-reporting in those figures. We need serious action to follow these statistics.”

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From September 2019, sex education will be compulsory in all UK schools and topics such as consent and healthy relationships will be taught from the age of four.

 

“We need to go back to basics and acknowledge that sexual harassment is happening, it is real and It’s effecting young people’s lives. It has to be talked about across the teaching profession and we need to put it back into teacher training,” says McNeil. “We need to prepare teachers for this part of their professional responsibility.”