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Sexual harassment among 16 to 18-year-olds is under-reported in Welsh colleges, schools inspectorate Estyn has found.
In its report, Estyn says many further education students chose not to or are unaware how to report sexual harassment to college staff.
It also says colleges in Wales need to do more to prevent sexual harassment happening between students.
How has Estyn defined peer-on-peer sexual harassment?
Esytn defined peer-on-peer sexual harassment as:
- Making sexual comments, remarks or jokes, either face-to-face or online.
- Lifting up skirts or taking a picture under a person’s clothing without them knowing.
- Making nasty comments about someone’s body, gender, sexuality or looks to cause them humiliation, distress or alarm.
- Image-based abuse, such as sharing a nude/semi-nude photo or video without the consent of the person pictured.
- Sending unwanted sexual, explicit or pornographic photographs/videos to someone.
It found that many incidents were recorded as generic bullying, and that staff lacked confidence in addressing sexual harassment and wanted more training to understand and tackle the issue.
The report showed the most serious cases of reported peer-on-peer sexual harassment were dealt with effectively by colleges, but because many students don’t feel able to report instances to to college staff, colleges’ understanding of the extent of the issue is limited.
Nearly half of college staff who responded to a survey on the issue felt there was “too little” training on how to deal with sexual harassment.
Owen Evans, chief inspector at Estyn, said much more needs to be done to protect students.
“Although the issues are complex, there are steps colleges can take to develop a stronger safeguarding culture that promotes respect and the importance of positive relationships,” he said.
“Our findings show that strong leadership and proactive approaches by colleges across Wales can encourage and empower learners to challenge unwanted conduct of a sexual nature and report all forms of sexual harassment and abuse.
“Staff confidence is key to tackling this and colleges need to have consistent approaches to professional learning on the topics of healthy relationships, sexual harassment and misogynism.”
Estyn found female students, those who identify as LGBTQ+ and those with additional learning needs were more likely to experience sexual harassment.
The report highlights examples of where sexual harassment training sessions have helped staff to address issues appropriately, and says a minority of colleges have recently improved awareness-raising activities. However, the impact of this is too early to gauge, Estyn said.
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