Yes, no problem. Yes, it was a concerning report, but we visited 32 schools and spoke to 1,300 learners as part of that, and that's really what helped us to publish the report with the findings it has. The learners were incredibly open and honest about their experiences, and staff too were honest about some of the challenges they've faced in dealing with this area. We've talked a lot about well-being today, but despite that strong focus on well-being, secondary schools just don't realise the extent of sexual harassment between pupils was one of the main messages, because pupils don't tell them, for a number of reasons—partly they don't feel confident enough, partly that schools haven't always created that culture or the opportunities for them to do that, but partly just because they don’t realise that that was something that maybe they should share with teachers as well, which is quite worrying.
Young people told us that peer-on-peer harassment happens mostly online and outside of school, but that that does sometimes then get brought back into school and their experiences in school, and they were keen that teachers and staff understand how common it is. And about half of secondary school pupils say they've had personal experience of some form of peer-on-peer sexual harassment, with twice as many girls reporting this compared to boys.
But pupils value well-delivered and purposeful personal and social education lessons, but they say they don't have enough opportunities to discuss sexuality and healthy relationships, and they don't have adequate provision for sex education. So, we think it's helpful that relationships and sexuality education will be a mandatory part of the new curriculum. So, that's a real opportunity to build some strength into that area. In the best schools, they do already promote a strong ethos of respect and celebrate diversity across all areas. It's really important that that's built upon and that whole-school approach to prevent negative and harmful peer-on-peer behaviour is built up to create an atmosphere where young people can report negative experiences. It's important to say that where they did, schools generally dealt well with particular incidents and put in place appropriate support for people who had been victims or for perpetrators, and quite often did something with whole-school assemblies and things on the back of that. But that tended to be reactive rather than building a proactive and conscious approach to it.
Alongside the report, we've published resources that we used as part of the work, which we hope will be helpful, but we've also published in more detail some of the feedback that we got from young people, just because we hope that will be helpful for schools as well.
So, in summary, really, it's important that that new statutory code and guidance is embraced, does become a statutory code and guidance, and that there's appropriate training, sharing of practice, and that it's really prioritised. But also, it's a wider issue than just schools, and I think we tried to make that point in the report—that this is an issue for society, and there were lots of aspects of the work that we found, beyond the remit of schools, beyond our remit, that were to do with the way that online gaming, social networking sites and things actually normalise some of this as well. So, there are things there as well that, perhaps, are for another time for the committee to look at, with other people maybe, as well.