Why Schools Fail to Tackle Sexual Harm Effectively: A Call for Deep Cultural Transformation
Across educational institutions, the challenge of addressing sexual harm among young people persists as a complex and often mishandled issue. Recent research conducted by scholars at the University of Surrey exposes a critical flaw in how schools, policing, and safeguarding professionals conceptualize and respond to such behaviors. While these professionals frequently recognize the influence of societal gender norms and wider cultural factors like misogyny, their interventions are largely constrained by institutional frameworks that prioritize individual behaviour management over systemic understanding. This disconnect ultimately undermines the potential for effective, lasting change in schools’ handling of sexual harm.
The prevailing approach within safeguarding systems tends to favor immediate, individual-focused responses such as incident reporting, behavioural discipline, and exclusion. Although these mechanisms address urgent concerns, they effectively compartmentalize sexual harm, detaching it from the broader social and relational contexts within which it arises and recurs. Consequently, important nuances — including the informal social pressures young people encounter and the digital environments that significantly shape their interactions — are neglected. This narrow focus risks perpetuating a status quo where girls may be implicitly expected to endure abuse, while boys frequently feel silenced, navigating harm in silence rather than receiving appropriate support.
The University of Surrey study involved detailed qualitative interviews with nine adolescents alongside 23 frontline professionals across southeastern England. Participants included educators, police officers, and safeguarding practitioners who provided insight into the challenges of interpreting and managing instances of sexual harm that often do not align neatly with legal categorizations. Particularly striking were accounts from young people describing experiences of coercion through emotional manipulation, non-consensual image sharing, and public humiliation among peers. Despite these clear violations of consent, professionals expressed discomfort in labeling such incidents as assault, revealing institutional ambiguity and oftentimes apprehension about escalating situations beyond the school setting.
A significant barrier highlighted by the research is the institutional tendency to reduce sexual harm to isolated acts of misconduct or trauma events. The research reveals that this framework obscures the relational dynamics and systemic inequalities — including gendered double standards and peer normative pressures — that constitute the backdrop to many harmful behaviors. Professionals, although cognizant of these broader cultural forces, are often constrained by risk-averse policies and safeguarding protocols that limit their capacity for holistic intervention. As a result, opportunities to engage in preventative or restorative work that confronts the root causes of sexual harm remain largely unrealized.
Dr. Emily Setty, Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Surrey, emphasizes the necessity for a “both/and” safeguarding model. According to Dr. Setty, immediate actions targeting behavior and safety must be complemented by sustained efforts that confront the deeper social dynamics enabling sexual harm. Such an approach involves cultivating relational spaces where young people can critically explore complex themes of consent and relationships, while also supporting professionals to examine their own unconscious biases and the so-called “grey areas” that complicate decision-making. This dual strategy promises to shift school cultures from reactive management of incidents toward proactive cultivation of safer environments.
Crucially, the study challenges the existing terminology of “harmful sexual behaviour,” which tends to focus on labeling individuals strictly as perpetrators or victims. Instead, the researchers propose reframing this concept to recognize sexual harm as relational and systemic, shaped by entrenched inequalities, institutional blind spots, and the pervasive impact of digital life. This paradigm shift moves conversations away from isolated events and towards understanding sexual harm as embedded within ongoing social interactions and cultural norms, thereby opening pathways for comprehensive strategies that engage the entire school ecosystem.
The intersection of digital culture and adolescent peer dynamics emerges as a particularly potent factor influencing sexual harm. Young people navigate complex, evolving terrains where online image-sharing, social media interactions, and digital forms of coercion blur traditional boundaries of consent and privacy. The study highlights that professionals often feel ill-equipped to address these emerging challenges, as existing safeguarding frameworks have not sufficiently adapted to the realities of digital adolescence. This gap points to urgent needs for updated training, policies, and resources that resonate with the technological contexts shaping young people’s experiences.
Furthermore, the research draws attention to the gendered dimensions of sexual harm in schools. While boys often experience pressures to suppress disclosures of harm, girls can be subjected to conflicting expectations involving both enduring abuse passively and facing scrutiny for speaking out. These double standards exacerbate inequalities and complicate the effectiveness of safeguarding interventions. Addressing these entrenched cultural norms requires transformative shifts in school ethos, professional training, and peer culture development—areas traditionally underexplored in safeguarding policies.
Embedded within the professionals’ accounts is an overarching institutional hesitancy to escalate ambiguous incidents, driven largely by fears related to overburdening legal systems, damaging school reputations, or triggering punitive consequences that may compound harm. This risk-averse stance creates a paradox where safeguarding systems become more about mitigating liability than fostering genuine safety. The research calls for balancing this cautiousness with courageous, context-sensitive practices that acknowledge and navigate complexity rather than avoid it.
The study’s methodology — engaging with adolescents and professionals directly — provides vital grounded perspectives that underscore the dissonance between experience and institutional response. By illuminating how young people’s voices often go unheard or are overshadowed by procedure, the research advocates for amplifying youth agency within safeguarding frameworks. Ensuring young people’s participation in shaping policies and educational initiatives could be a foundational step toward culturally responsive and effective prevention strategies.
In conclusion, this research underscores that confronting sexual harm in schools requires more than procedural refinement; it demands broad cultural transformation embedded within education, policing, and safeguarding systems. Immediate behavioural responses remain essential but must be deliberately integrated with ongoing efforts to challenge gender norms, peer culture, and digital pressures that perpetuate harm. By adopting a relational and systemic lens, professionals can move beyond simplistic classifications and develop nuanced, sustainable approaches that protect and empower young people in the spaces where they live, learn, and grow.
Subject of Research: The complexities and institutional challenges of addressing sexual harm among young people within educational, policing, and safeguarding contexts.
Article Title: Why schools struggle to address sexual harm: new research calls for broader cultural change
News Publication Date: Not specified
Web References:
– Full paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13552600.2025.2521078#references-Section
– DOI link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13552600.2025.2521078
Keywords: Social sciences; Young people; Education
