Donna Stevens, chief executive of the Girls’ Schools Association, was recently reported saying that parents of teenage girls are more likely to see moving their daughter to a co-educational sixth form as a risk, following the rise of Everyone’s Invited.
More recently, she has acknowledged that evidence of this trend is currently anecdotal.
In early 2021, the Everyone’s Invited website began publishing testimonies of women and girls who had suffered harassment and sexual violence in UK schools and universities.
As of early January 2022 the website featured over 50,000 such accounts. The website prompted a review of the issue by Ofsted and chief inspector Amanda Spielman observed that many of the testimonies reveal that girls have not felt able to report serious incidents of sexual abuse to their schools.
“It is important to note that the problem is societal and not specific to schools.”
She also stressed the importance of a culture of respect between the sexes, and of schools having the necessary support and structures to allow them to respond appropriately to reports of abuse.
The chief inspector is right to stress the need for schools to take a lead on this issue, although it is important to note that it is a societal one and not specific to schools. Many instances of transgression against school age girls take place away from school premises.
I am far from certain, then, that segregating girls away from boys is the right response. On the contrary, encouraging students of all sexes to discuss, together, their experiences and chart a way forward appears the more fruitful, however challenging it may be for all involved. This has value both for pupils, and for schools with regard to their safeguarding functions.
At Bedales, Everyone’s Invited, and the murder of Sarah Everard saw my teaching colleagues Charlotte Harding and Jen Moore together with school counsellor Rachael Emsley anticipate a rise in interest in female safety at the school, and treatment more widely, in the school community.
“A working party of students of all sexes is developing changes to school policies.”
The result – what we have called “Dialogue for Change”– has encouraged pupils to participate in themed safe sessions in which they have shared their experiences, concerns and hopes. Designed using principles of international conflict resolution, the process is now at the stage where a working party of students of all sexes is developing changes to school policies and procedures.
Bedales was founded in 1893 to be a humane alternative to the authoritarian regimes typical of late-Victorian public schools. The school became fully co-educational in 1898 (one of the first in England to do so), with students given a formal voice by 1916, when the School Council was formed.
Thus, we have a long-standing culture both of educating girls and boys together, and of giving them a genuine voice in all aspects of school life. In so doing, we encourage them to understand their subjects, and indeed their worlds, from as many different perspectives and experiences as possible, and to shape the work of the school. We have not started this latest process of dialogue with a blank slate, then.
“We want students to enjoy school, whilst seeking to prepare them for life beyond it.”
That said, I do not assume for one second that what we are doing will eradicate the many tensions and misunderstandings that can accompany the rise of sexual maturity in young people. However, I am certain that it will help them to better understand each other, to think and act in more informed and sophisticated ways and, importantly, for the school to better conceptualise and discharge its responsibilities to them.
An important part of education as we understand it at Bedales is the development of resilience – for the sake of brevity, the idea that we can respond successfully to what the world throws at us.
We believe this is best developed through experience, exposure, reflection and discussion – and our skilled and committed support. Accordingly, we pursue an educational approach that encourages pupils of all ages and dispositions to take appropriate risks, that catches them when they fall, and inculcates the view that this is all part and parcel of learning and growing and not to be feared.
We want them to enjoy school, whilst seeking to prepare them for life beyond it – there may be few certainties in this regard, but one such is that we share the world with all genders. Given this, it seems to me that keeping young people apart at such an important time is short-sighted.