Developing Healthy Attitudes
Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in Schools
DHA Sexual Harassment Report
The South Yorkshire Violence Reduction unit has reducing Violence Against Women and Girls VAWG as one of its principal priorities. They have done a large scoping piece of work identifying areas of risk for women and girls as well as identifying good practice in support for victims and the large number of statutory and voluntary services offering operating in this space. You can read about it here. Missing from this report is the experience of young women and girls in schools. This project was commissioned to capture the Students’ voice in South Yorkshire Schools.
What we did:
The project visited 10 schools in a variety of settings across each of the City’s and Boroughs across South Yorkshire and also the Youth Parliament/ Council in each area. Most of the young people we worked with were Y10 or Y12 with a mixture of male and female students.
Consultants delivered a workshop on Sexual Harassment giving the students knowledge of what is meant by Sexual Harassment, techniques to deal with it, and information about the law and what a good ally can do to mitigate matters and offer support safely.
The students were then asked about their experiences and knowledge of Sexual Harassment in their schools, what their school did well to support them and what the school or the education system in general could do to support them and their peers.
We wish to thank all the schools who invited us in to work with their students. We and all the students agreed that this demonstrated a desire to improve and a mature acknowledgement by the individual schools and academies about the existence of the problem in all schools.
We also thank all the students we worked with us on the project for their honesty, thought fulness, sensible suggestions and desire to improve the situation for younger children and young people. Without exception the students recognised that this is a hard topic for schools to tackle and were grateful that their school was taking this so seriously.
The final report can be found here.
Resources
South Yorkshire Anti-sexism resources
Contact Us