Our Government is reluctant it seems to be pro active rather than reactive on many issues that affect children especially it seems when it comes to prioritising their safety and Well being. Government should be aware that the recent race tensions between Black Lives Matter protestors and others will affect children and in cases will negatively impact on the prevalence of bullying and violence in schools.
What we see in wider society will always have an influence on our young people and children, so it shouldn’t take lot of effort to see the potential issues that schools will face after Lockdown, with potential race aggravated attacks and assaults in schools that sadly given the lack of attention given by politician to the increasing levels of violence in schools and to our campaign warnings could lead to deaths and tragedy.
Aside from the most obvious and consistent call we are making for policies to be changed to allow greater transparency and accountability within the bullying and violence complaints procedures, greater effort needs to be made by everyone including Government to create more unity in the wider communities rather than stoking division.
It’s taken Marcus Rashford speaking out about free school meals, to highlight the issue of how low on the list of Government priorities the well – being of children is in Society today.
Last year The Government launched their National suicide prevention plan, with commitments from all the relevant Government departments to stop suicides among all groups across society including veterans, prisoners, people in work, university students and so many others.
While all these groups have received in depth attention and commitments, there is only one commitment from the DfE throughout the whole plan to prevent suicides among children. That being to:
‘Explore issues affecting young people which may be impacting their mental health such as body image and other pressures from social media’
Absolutely no mention of bullying and violence including sexual violence, despite the increasing amounts of suicide in schools related to the issue.
We may not have a Marcus Rashford leading our campaign but we have an army of determined families that will not stop until the priorities of politicians and the policies when it comes to children are made to change.
The majority of families within the Safer Schools campaign have dealt with issues of bullying and violence of a non-sexual nature. We cannot stress enough though, that there are families within our group, who’s children have been victims of sexual violence, and therefore it is a serious issue that we are challenging and is an integral part of the campaign that we are demanding be addressed, when it comes to the way complaints are dealt with.
From sexual assaults to rapes within schools, these incidents and crimes are often ignored by schools in the same way that non-sexual bullying and violence is, as a result of government policy and procedures and a lack of legislation that allows schools and authorities to do just that. There are thousands of sexual assaults and rapes that have occurred in schools over the last few years and yet families and parents are simply unaware of the fact. The fact that the government they trust to protect their children has policies in place, to allow schools and authorities to avoid responsibility and blame, when vicious crimes such as rape and sexual assault take place.
How many parents could be certain that if their child was a victim of a serious and violent sexual assault or even raped at school, that their child would come home and tell them. If your answer is that you are not, then we assume that your reason for never having thought about this before stems from a belief, that if that was to happen to your child, then they or someone would report this to a teacher or appropriate adult in school. But then what? At the very least surely that adult would have to write a report or record? Surely they would have to inform you, surely the Police would be informed the local Safeguarding officer and other relevant authorities. The fact is that none of this has to be done by law and the horrific truth is that Government legislation and policy leaves it’s completely up to the school to use their discretion to decide what should be done if anything at all.
So what’s the danger of allowing schools and authorities to police themselves in this area and trust them completely to decide when something should and shouldn’t be reported. An even more important question is should school’s be given so much freedom with so little oversight and accountability when they may be largely at fault for a crime taking place. What happens when a rape happens because students were perhaps left unsupervised or because poor management or the culture within a school has clearly caused issues that have led to an incident.
When crimes and serious harm have occurred as a result of potential negligence by schools and authorities or for any other reason, the way the issue is dealt with must be accountable by law, to the families, outside agencies and the Government. Our campaign continues to call for the policies laws and legislation to be put in place to ensure that this happens and our campaign continues to call on the Secretary of State for Education to meet with us, to look at our evidence, to ensure that no other child or family is made to suffer in the future because the changes weren’t made.
