Sexual Harassment
Lay Royd Primary School has a sex and relationships policy which has been the subject of consultation with staff, parents and carers and a detailed, robust, age appropriate and thorough sex and relationships curriculum which educates our students about these issues.
Our strategy to combat the risk of sexual harassment in or around the school is as follows;
- Defining. Highlighting and discouraging at a very early age the low level behaviours and habits which could promote the sort of unhealthy environment in which the conditions for sexual harassment could grow; for example, including as unacceptable behaviour in our behaviour policy the use of slang words for body parts or the promotion of careless gossip about other students and their relationships. This is done through a range of methods such as but not limited to; form time activities, assemblies, display boards, drop down days/afternoons and PSHCE lessons.
- Communication. Ensuring that students, staff, parents and other members of the school community have access to methods of reporting any incidents of sexual harassment such as; speaking to any of the safeguarding team or pastoral team or using the reporting tool on our website.
- Maintaining rigorous and robust supervision of our environment, including; all parts of the school, both inside and out by physical supervision and CCTV; further to this, our virtual environment is monitored via sophisticated and robust filtering system named ‘Smoothwall’ and electronic restrictions which is reflected in our strict no mobile phone use policy. Students and staff also adhere to our acceptable usage agreement when using school devices.
- Training our staff to understand the prevalence and nature of sexual harassment. All staff have undertaken whole school training on sexual harassment; how to educate, report, challenge and recognise the signs. Staff have also completed further online training on sexual harassment. Sexual Harassment is also part of the new staff induction training.
- Informing and liaising with parents and carers about issues through our weekly newsletters and parent engagement evenings (PSHCE/RSE Evenings, Parents Evening, Wellbeing Information Evenings etc.)
- Applying our existing equality, counselling, safeguarding, anti-bullying, behaviour and pastoral procedures robustly to any cases of sexual harassment.
Guide for Parents: Talking to Your Child about Sexual Harassment
