78% of students have experienced some form of harassment and 49% have witnessed it.

From the Everyone’s Invited movement to the Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges, it is impossible to ignore that there is an issue of sexual misconduct within our Further Education (FE) system.?

The reality, as supported by our exclusive data, is that harassment and discrimination is either experienced or witnessed by too many students within our Further Education system.

With this, there has been a cultural shift in the wrong direction. One that normalises the existence of unacceptable behaviours where it concerns peer on peer harassment and discrimination amongst young people.?

What this means is that smaller behaviours are left unchallenged, in turn creating a culture where misconduct is tolerated, and reporting is infrequent.

In our latest report we implore the sector to look beyond just the prevalence of different forms of harassment taking place within Further Education providers. We know that peer on peer harassment and discrimination exists. The prevalence data in our report is simply to contextualise the issue.

Beyond this, we’ll explore the extent to which learners see these behaviours as normal, their expectations of schools and colleges in addressing the issues, and we’ll suggest how centring the student voice is fundamental to change.

Taking learners’ expectations into consideration, this report goes on to provide advice, guidance and support for institutions looking to effectively combat prevalence and change perceptions of unacceptable behaviour. We suggest this from the belief that progress can only be made by taking a whole institution approach to change.

To read our data, and see our advice on how you can tackle harassment and discrimination in the sector,?click here?to download our report.