My friend’s 11-year-old came home from primary school recently in tears. She was being bullied by a small group of boys in her year, who had noticed she was entering puberty, and laughed and teased her about her changing shape and increasing weight.
Naturally, my friend was worried. Her bright, gifted and otherwise confident child had become withdrawn, was avoiding social occasions and was starting to prefer the company of her computer to her friends. It wasn’t like her, she said, as she had always been so sociable.
The boys had told the girl that she was unattractive and no-one would ever fancy her. They made suggestive gestures and used overtly sexual language. She was upset and felt uncomfortable and humiliated. Other girls in the class had been similarly teased.
On some levels, none of this should come as a shock. Girls have always suffered the indignity of comments from their male classmates as their bodies change, and at this age both sexes struggle to manage new and strange emotions that are part and parcel of the onset of adolescence.
What makes these situations worse now than in the past is that our children – even those in primary schools, according to reports – are being exposed to pornography and images at an age that would have been unthinkable before the days of “smart” devices and the internet.
Earlier this year, a study from the House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee, found that groping, bullying and catcalling of girls and young women was rife in schools. Worse, the problem was often dismissed by teachers as banter, or victims were told that it should be viewed as a compliment.
Calls from experts for statutory, age-appropriate PSHE and sex education for pupils continue to be dismissed by the Department for Education, despite growing evidence that it is desperately needed.
The latest warnings came from the chairs of five different government select committees who wrote to Justine Greening in November criticising her and predecessor Nicky Morgan, for failing to act.
That’s five different chairs – not a lone, maverick voice, but five cross-party committees worried about the “lifelong consequences” for the victims and effects of prolonged inaction by ministers.
Permit me to add this parent’s voice to those concerns. My own child is only six but has already been told by male classmates that girls “can’t do maths”. Gender put-downs begin early. Where these attitudes come from in children so young is for another discussion but teachers need to be alert and to challenge it. I don’t doubt that they do where they know it happens, but I wonder how well-reported these incidents are and how much discrete time is devoted in timetables regularly to discussing social, emotional and personal issues.
Growing numbers of children, for example, are having their lives blighted by cyber-bullying. Sexting, as horrifying as the prospect is to a parent, appears to be normal to today’s young people.
Specific PSHE and sex and relationships education lessons would seem to me to be a good place to start discussing some of these themes. It doesn’t have to be heavy stuff. Let’s start with asking why shouldn’t girls be able to play football? Who decides that it’s sissy for boys to play with dolls, or to enjoy dancing? And, at the appropriate time, let’s bring up the tricky subject of children’s bodies changing as they grow up and that it isn’t okay to tease, bully and name-call. If mutual respect doesn’t come naturally then it needs to be explained and taught.
Yet Justine Greening and the DfE are more preoccupied with quality of lessons and finding out “what works” than acknowledging there are real and serious dangers facing our children.
Here’s the thing, secretary of state: by the time you decide what is effective and how it should be taught, thousands of young people – and not just girls, but gay, lesbian, transgender or any other group a majority sees fit to abuse – could be damaged for life, their views of themselves and others skewed by what they see and read in the media or on the internet.
In a newspaper interview recently, Shappi Korsandi, the comedian, said school was the safest place to discuss such issues and that we should all be “less prudish”. “You’re not ruining a childhood by talking about sex and relationships,” she said.
She is right.
As I tried to comfort my friend, I urged her to speak to her daughter’s teacher. It’s a man, she said warily. Even better, I replied.
Perhaps boys will heed the words of another male.
In the event, the teacher was rightly horrified. The perpetrators were spoken to, and class time was devoted to discuss in an appropriate way the issues this incident had raised. The matter is mercifully now closed, for the time being at least, and my friend has her happy, out-going daughter back.
If parents trust teachers to deal with these difficult issues, why can’t Justin Greening?
- Diary of a Parent is written anonymously by a mother living in the South of England who has a child in year 2 in primary school. Names have been changed where appropriate. Email your views and questions to editor@headteacher-update.com.