Sexual harassment not being reported in schools, says minister

The minister hopes better policies from government and other bodies will improve reporting of incidents

School pupils are not reporting sexual harassment because they lack confidence in how it will be dealt with, Wales' education minister has said.

A report by school inspectors last December found about half of secondary pupils said they experienced sexual harassment from other students.

Jeremy Miles said "what we already know is very disturbing" but the full scale of the issue was not clear.

The minister was giving evidence to a Senedd committee on Wednesday.

• Children as young as 11 pressured for nudes

Estyn's report said pupils were regularly put under pressure to send nude photos and girls were harassed over the length of their skirts.

The study found many pupils would not tell their teachers, as incidents had become "normalised" and teachers often dismissed them as "trivial".

Children told inspectors that harassment happened in the classroom but was more common outside school and online.

Addressing the Children, Young People and Education Committee on Wednesday, Mr Miles said the report shows that one of the "fundamental challenges" was that "children and young people aren't reporting what's happening because they don't have confidence that it will, perhaps, be dealt with in the best way".

"I don't think we can say that we understand the full scale of it, but I should say that what we already know is very disturbing."

The minister said the Welsh government was working on "how we can improve reporting" to make it "robust and consistent".

He said he wanted to see an "increasing confidence in young people that their concerns are taken seriously" and a culture in education that any harassment and bullying was unacceptable.

Mr Miles hoped better policies from government and other bodies would improve reporting, how that information is collected and "our understanding of the issue" in the longer term.

He said the government was considering what training would be needed to give school staff "confidence to be alert for issues of sexual harassment in school and to feel they are using the right language, saying the right things, hearing what they're being told in the right way".