Sexual harassment still ‘rife’ in UK schools, poll of female staff finds

Sexual harassment is still “rife” in schools in the UK, according to a poll of mainly female support staff, some of whom complained of inappropriate sexual comments and physical harassment by male pupils and some male colleagues.

One in 10 of the secondary school staff who responded to the survey said they had been sexually harassed, while a quarter said they had witnessed sexual harassment in their place of work in the past five years. Among staff across all school stages, 7% had suffered sexual harassment.

In one incident, a female learning support assistant at school in Hertfordshire described how a pupil tried to kiss her and push her head towards his crotch. Other respondents described male pupils trying to touch or slap a staff member’s bottom.

A teaching assistant in Wales said: “I work in a primary school. A cluster of three boys who were in year 5 tried to embarrass me by talking about ‘shagging up the arse’ and asking: ‘Do you like cum, miss?’”

More often the harassment is directed by male pupils towards their female classmates. One teaching assistant in the south-west described “boys pushing girls and holding them down to kiss them, playing games called ‘rape touch’, and commenting on girls’ bodies”.

Other incidents involved male staff, including head teachers, behaving inappropriately towards female colleagues. One survey participant said: “Headmaster texted another staff member saying he wants to see photos of how her operation goes. She’d had breast enhancement surgery.”

Another contributor described how a male headteacher told his female colleague to “stand here and look pretty, I’ll do the talking”. Two out of five staff (42%) who witnessed abusive incidents said they did not report them because they felt it was pointless.

The poll by Unison, in collaboration with UK Feminista, will add to concerns that little has changed since the anti-rape movement Everyone’s Invited exposed alarming levels of misogyny and sexual abuse in schools in 2021.

A review by the schools’ inspectorate, Ofsted, at the time concluded that sexual harassment had become “normalised” for young people, in school, online and in other unsupervised spaces including parks and house parties.

Unison called on the next government to ensure that staff and pupils are protected from damaging sexist attitudes, language and behaviour. “Staff need to know how to address these issues and that they will be taken seriously when they report their concerns,” the report states.

“Parents will be horrified to learn their children are being taught in such toxic environments,” the Unison general secretary, Christina McAnea, said. “The danger is that language and behaviour learned at an early age stay with pupils as they become adults and go out into the wider world.”

UK Feminista’s deputy director, Nina Humphries, added: “It is deeply concerning that misogyny is so normalised in schools. This fuels violence against women and girls and limits the aspirations of all young people.”

The publication of the findings coincides with the start of Unison’s annual conference in Brighton on Tuesday. The poll was conducted online between 20 and 29 March, attracting responses from staff in UK primary schools (49%), secondary schools (31%), nurseries (9%), special schools (8%), all-through schools (2%) and pupil referral units (1%).