NEWS

Safeguarding Awareness Week

This week The Ladies’ College will be celebrating ‘Safeguarding Awareness Week’. The inaugural Safeguarding Awareness Week run by Times Educational Supplement is an opportunity to explore what it means to feel safe, particularly in light of the recent reports of the rise of sexual harassment in schools. 

Since March 2021, thousands of testimonies from young people across the globe have been shared of peer–on–peer sexual harassment and abuse on the ‘Everyone’s Invited’ website. In a survey of females between the ages of 13 and 21 who use social media, more than one in three suffered sexual harassment (The Guardian, Feb 2022). Evidence has shown that these young women will likely find the experience stressful and distressing and will adversely affect their educational attainment (Keeping Children Safe In Education, 2021). In light ofthis, Safeguarding Awareness week gives us, as a College,a platform to start a conversation with our students, parents and staff to explore what it means to feel safe. Throughout the week, we have a number of awareness-raising activities includinga pledge wall to encourage our community to consider what we can do to put an end to online sexual harassment, tutor time activities about recognising and reporting sexual harassment, as well as an update from our Student Leadership Team on their recent leadership project: ‘What does respect mean to you?’ The aim of this project is to ensure our community understands and recognises inappropriate, disrespectful and misogynistic behaviour and what to do about it.

Dr Vanessa Mitchell, Deputy Principal Pastoral said “I am very encouraged by the addition of an awareness week such as this. Not only do we have some interactive and valuable activities for our girls, but staff and parents will have access to a range of webinars with safeguarding experts exploring what we can do to protect young women. Theresources, guidance and advice will ensure we have preventative measures in place to guard against sexual harassment and abuse in our community.”

Ms Daniele Harford-Fox, the Principal at the College and whose work in this area has been recognised nationally, said, “The problem of sexual harassment in schools has been underplayed for years. Research has found that 59% of girls had faced some form of sexual harassment at school in the past year. A sticking plaster won’t fix this. We have to genuinely look at our culture and ask why this behaviour continues. As the leader of a girls’ school, I know we can’t solve the problem, but we can at least create space for young women and empower them to challenge this culture so that positive change, for the benefit of everyone, can happen.”