Item 8 today is a debate on the Children, Young People and Education Committee’s report, 'Everybody’s affected: Peer-on-peer sexual harassment among learners'. I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion. Jayne Bryant.

Motion NDM8112 Jayne Bryant

To propose that the Senedd:

Notes the report of the Children, Young People and Education Committee ‘Everybody’s affected: Peer on peer sexual harassment among learners’ which was laid in the Table Office on 13 July 2022.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Deputy Llywydd. Before I begin my opening remarks, I should warn anybody listening to today’s debate that I will be talking in a general way about peer-on-peer sexual harassment among children and young people. Some people may find some of what I and others say distressing.

I'll begin by making it clear what exactly I mean when I talk about 'sexual harassment'. I mean making sexual comments, remarks, jokes, and nasty comments to cause humiliation, distress or alarm; I mean taking pictures under a person’s clothes without them knowing; I mean sharing nude photos or videos of someone without their consent, or sending unwanted sexually explicit photos or videos to someone. By sexual harassment, I do not mean 'banter'. Sexual harassment is not 'boys being boys', whatever that means. It is not bullying, either. When I talk about sexual harassment, I am talking about a form of sexual violence.

We launched this inquiry because of the shocking findings of Estyn’s thematic report, published in December 2021, alongside concerns raised to me by representatives of police forces in Wales. We took verbal and written evidence from professionals, organisations and the Welsh Government between February and May this year. We also launched a survey aimed at children and young people to ask them what change they wanted to see to reduce peer-on-peer sexual harassment in schools and colleges.

The remarkably consistent evidence we received described a harrowing backdrop to the learning of many children and young people: catcalling, hurtful comments, homophobic and transphobic verbal abuse during the school day. And the problem is worse outside the school day. Those abusive comments continue on messaging apps and social media. Alongside those comments, learners receive such high volumes of unsolicited sexual images that many young people have become desensitised to image-based abuse. The problem is so extensive that many girls and young women see it as a part of normal life.

That should alarm everybody here. Because the impact of sexual harassment is substantial and long-lasting. It affects young people’s mental health and educational attainment. It can drain self-confidence, cause withdrawal from education and society, lead to substance abuse, self-harm and even attempted suicide. These risks are heightened for our most vulnerable learners.

That peer-on-peer sexual harassment among learners is so common in schools and colleges is a reflection of society more widely. Sexism, homophobia and transphobia are stubbornly deep-rooted in schools, just as they are across society at large. Pornography depicting unrealistic, unhealthy or even violent sex is easily accessible, and is the first sex education that many young people get. And although social media and messaging apps provide wonderful opportunities for people to communicate and stay in touch, they can create pressure for young people to look, act or behave in a certain way. They can act as vehicles for sexual harassment by making it easy to share sexual images.

The causes of peer-on-peer sexual harassment are incredibly complicated. For that reason, we see very little value in singling out anyone to blame for its root causes. But we are clear as a committee that a lot needs to change. We heard time and time again from professionals and from young people that despite pockets of good practice, sex and relationships education is generally poor. We heard that it was not done well enough, insufficient, poor quality and, sometimes, even completely absent. The Welsh Government must ensure that pupils are taught about the underlying causes of peer-on-peer sexual harassment.

We heard over and over again that the new curriculum is an opportunity to improve sex and relationships education. We hope that its potential is realised. But any child currently in year 8 or above—those most at risk of peer-on-peer sexual harassment—will never be taught under the new curriculum. So, old curriculum or new, change must take place at pace for the sake of every single learner. We also heard from young people that school staff routinely downplay their experiences of sexual harassment, dismiss their concerns, or even completely ignore signs that it’s happening. All schools must make it absolutely clear to their learners that sexual harassment is unacceptable. They must respond to reports seriously, promptly and consistently.

We have asked Estyn to amend its inspection framework for schools and colleges to ensure that it focuses on how well education establishments keep records of sexual harassment, how they respond to allegations of sexual harassment, and support learners who have experienced it. But we understand that many school staff do not feel that they have received adequate training to be able to respond to peer-on-peer sexual harassment confidently. Conversations with young people about unhealthy sexual behaviours are not easy. School staff need support. We have recommended that the Welsh Government provides ring-fenced funding for training for all school staff, not just teaching staff, to identify, respond to and report incidents of peer-on-peer sexual harassment.

In total, we made 24 recommendations in our report, some of which I have already touched on, but before I turn to my colleagues across the Senedd and in Government for their contributions, I'll add just a few more. Perhaps the most important is that young people must be central to developing the Welsh Government’s response to peer-on-peer sexual harassment in the form of a young people’s advisory board. Our hope is that this board shapes action in relation to some key recommendations: a national awareness-raising campaign targeted at learners and their families; a review of the support offered to victims of sexual harassment; and the development of a bank of effective approaches to sex and relationships education.

We know too little about the scale and nature of sexual harassment in primary schools and colleges. Worryingly, we heard that it can start among children as young as nine. We have recommended that the Welsh Government undertake an age-appropriate review into sexual harassment in primary schools. The Welsh Government had already committed to a similar review in colleges, a crucial piece of work that we are all pleased is under way. I hope that the Minister will be able to reaffirm the Government’s commitment to tackling peer-on-peer sexual harassment among learners here today in the Senedd, and update us on work carried out to date and the timetable for work to come to implement the accepted recommendations.

I would also like to put to the Minister some concerns raised to us by stakeholders when we asked for feedback on the Welsh Government’s response to our report. The first: can the Minister confirm that the Welsh Government recognises the impact of sexual harassment on young people and the long-lasting impact it can have on a child’s life, even if it isn’t categorised as an adverse childhood experience? Second: that the funding provided for training for school staff to report and respond to incidents of sexual harassment does not come at the cost of much-needed training and support for school staff in other areas.

And finally, can the Minister reassure us that young people will be genuinely and directly involved in co-developing the Government's response to peer-on-peer sexual harassment, from working on the national awareness-raising campaign to developing a best-practice set of sessions for schools to teach about the impact of peer-on-peer sexual harassment? I look forward to hearing the contributions from members of the committee and all Members across the Senedd, and from the Minister. Diolch yn fawr.

I'd first like to thank our committee Chair, Jayne Bryant, for all her hard work during this report, and, of course, the clerks and staff who have so ably assisted the committee in our work, enabling us to do this important review and so quickly. It was palpably obvious that we needed to do this review quickly to understand the issues and also create awareness of what is happening within this Senedd, in the Welsh Government and across Wales, as to what is going on in our schools—the horrendous nature of it and the fact that it is a problem that is growing and will continue to grow unless we take action now.

Deputy Presiding Officer, Estyn's report on peer-on-peer sexual harassment among secondary school pupils in Wales, '"We don’t tell our teachers"', helped to inform, as our Chair said, and prompt this report. It shockingly found that half of all pupils said they had personal experience of peer-on-peer sexual harassment in some form, and three quarters of all pupils reported seeing other pupils experiencing it, with the most common forms of peer-on-peer sexual harassment during the school day. Sexual harassment's impact on learners can be so severe that it not only impacts their learning, but also their relationships, mental health, life prospects, and, in serious cases, can lead to self-harm and suicide.

At the start of this process, our Chair, Jayne Bryant, met with the police representatives last November, where she learned of the police's particular concern about peer-on-peer sexual harassment, which has become increasingly prevalent, especially online. This coincided with Estyn's preparations to report on its investigation into peer-on-peer harassment among secondary school pupils. The report, published on 8 December 2021, laid bare the enormity of the problem. It's commonplace in schools, and so much so, as our Chair outlined, that it's become normalised, which is extremely worrying.

It's clear from our findings that young people do not feel comfortable reporting their issues to school staff, and schools are struggling to respond in the instances when they do. This harassment is going on beyond school hours, as our Chair also outlined, permeating the lives of young people both online and in school, which was exacerbated by the pandemic, as was shown in our findings. As is said in the foreword, as seriously as we looked at the issue then, as I look back six months later, it is clear to me that we underestimated the enormity of the problem.

Estyn found that 61 per cent of female pupils and 29 per cent of male pupils have experienced sexual harassment—

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, sure.

I'd also like to pay tribute to my colleague Jayne Bryant for her excellent chairing of the committee, which I sit on. I just wanted to raise the point that you talk about males who also suffer from sexual harassment. I'm sure you'd agree with me, and others who sit on that committee, that nobody should be afraid to come forward if they are suffering sexual harassment, especially young men who do feel stigmatised if they come forward. I'm sure you'd agree with me that if anybody suffers sexual harassment, no matter what their gender, they should come forward and report it to the right authorities.

Yes, absolutely. A very important point made by my colleague there.

What is worrying also is that the numbers that we've seen, and the evidence that we've gathered, are probably underestimating the problem of what we're seeing. Further still, whilst Estyn did not consider sexual harassment in primary schools or colleges, their inquiry convinced them that it's likely that sexual harassment is common in both. Our committee heard the same as well. Learners with additional learning needs are also at risk, and whilst robust data to reinforce the point has not yet been acquired, they have reason to believe that other groups of learners are at risk too.

The causes of peer-on-peer sexual harassment are complicated. They include deep-rooted societal attitudes, amplified by pornography, social media, and in the recent years, the pandemic. They are embedded cultural matters that stretch far beyond the remit of this committee and the scope of this inquiry. It is a society-wide problem. The Welsh Government, the Senedd, local authorities, schools, charities, parents, families, all of us, need to act collectively to de-normalise these harmful behaviours.

I know that the Minister is here today and will respond to the debate, and I want to ask if he will ensure that the awareness campaign by the Welsh Government is created and implemented in our schools as soon as possible. Only through proper education and awareness will young people truly understand the issue, be able to combat it, and also know how to get the help that they need.

We had excellent suggestions from the young people who gave evidence in our committee, and I see the Chair is nodding, that is definitely worth looking at—their ideas for posters and social media and so on. From the evidence given, and from being aware as a parent of a child who has just recently gone out of junior school, it is clear that cases of peer-on-peer sexual harassment are happening in those years 5 and 6 groups as well, as we had evidence in our committee that proved it. I'd be grateful to the Minister if he could ensure that any campaign does extend to those groups in primary schools, of course, with the content age-appropriate, so that we can nip that behaviour in the bud as soon as possible.

Twenty-four recommendations have been made in the report, covering a range of issues, with the hope that the Welsh Government, Estyn, and other bodies involved receive them and proceed constructively. We, the Welsh Conservatives, welcome the recommendations from the committee and fully support the important demands and recommendations being made to the Welsh Government. We believe that sexual harassment in any form is completely unacceptable, and believe it must be an absolute priority of this Welsh Government to ensure that schools in Wales are no longer an environment where young people are made to feel unsafe, and where sexual harassment and sexual violence can flourish. Thank you.

What was obvious in the evidence that we heard as a committee was that peer-on-peer sexual harassment was so common that it was accepted as normal behaviour. That was certainly the most striking thing for me as well, and that schools are also struggling to deal with this effectively. The impact, in some cases, affects the well-being, attainment and health of learners. As Laura Anne Jones said, what we heard from the young people themselves was extremely valuable, and their ideas about how we should deal with the problem—simple but obvious things, such as having a poster to explain what's acceptable and what's not acceptable.

Plaid Cymru supports the main recommendations of the report, namely a national campaign to raise awareness, with the experiences and opinions of young people at the heart of it, and calls on the Welsh Government and Estyn to ensure that schools respond better, keep better records, and support pupils better, as well as the need to carry out a review of the situation in our primary schools, because the attitudes that create this problem start to manifest themselves from a young age, and we found evidence of that in our inquiry. The overwhelming majority of those who experience harassment are girls, and LGBTQ+ pupils and other pupils with minority characteristics are also more likely to experience harassment. It was clear from our inquiry that the cause of peer-on-peer sexual harassment is complex, but it was clear that social attitudes, above all else, are responsible for creating the circumstances that lead to these cases within and beyond the school and college gates.

Plaid Cymru fully supports the role of the relationship and sexuality education code within the new curriculum in addressing this, but more needs to be done now for the learners who will not benefit from this attempt to change the understanding of our children for the better in this regard. The support available to those who suffer sexual harassment is fragmented and inconsistent, and the general standard of sex and relationships education is unacceptable in a number of schools. To improve this, we need better training for all school staff in relation to a subject that is difficult for many, and invisible to others. And this is an urgent matter. 

It's good that the Government has accepted most of the recommendations, but I would like to draw attention to one that Stonewall Cymru has been emphasising for a while, and that is still not realised, namely, that the Welsh Government should publish its statutory national trans guidelines for schools by January 2023. This report clearly explains why the delay is unacceptable and harmful, and I would therefore like to ask the Minister what progress has been made in this regard.

As the report states, it is not only through our education system that we will get rid of the harmful attitudes that find expression in this sexual harassment. Politics, the media, and society more broadly have a responsibility not to allow or accept misogynistic or sexist attitudes, or any language or behaviours that demean or exploit identity or gender. We must work together to de-normalise what has been normalised, even among our youngest children. The report and its recommendations are genuinely important if we are serious about creating a society that is equally healthy and safe for our young people.

Can I thank all Members for contributing, not only to today's debate, but also to this difficult report, but a very important report is what it is, led so eloquently by the Chair, Jayne Bryant? But Jayne's committee is not the only committee addressing this particular issue. The Petitions Committee, which I chair, has received a petition, upon the publication of this particular report, and it was submitted by Hanna Andersen with a total of 417 signatures. That's now closed, in terms of collecting signatures, and it will be coming to committee later in the year, but I wanted to take the opportunity to just outline the title of the petition and some of the highlights from the text. The petition is titled, 'Take immediate action to end sexual harassment in ALL Welsh schools, not just secondary schools'. And it goes on to highlight and suggest that evidence shows that harassment is also rife in primary schools and colleges. Now, I note, in the Chair’s opening, that the Welsh Government will be reviewing this in colleges, but the text of the petition actually says,

'We can’t wait for yet more inquiries before taking action. The Welsh Government must ensure that the actions taken from the report are immediately extended to cover all settings, keeping learners safe from sexual harassment throughout education'.

The actual petition draws on the report from Estyn, which Laura Anne Jones has mentioned this afternoon, and I won't go over that. Presiding Officer, I'm obviously very limited in what I can say about the petition and, obviously, what steps committee members and the committee as a whole will decide to take when it comes to this petition, but I did think it was right and a good opportunity to do two things, really: make this debate aware of the strong feelings expressed by petitioners, and also give the Minister some opportunity, perhaps, to respond before the petition comes to my committee, and to take those actions that keep learners safe in all those settings, and not just secondary schools. Diolch.

I want to thank that committee for this report and all those people who've contributed towards it. I'd particularly like to thank the Everyone's Invited movement for shining a light on the prevalence of peer-on-peer sexual harassment. I was pleased to read that the Welsh Government have agreed to adopt Estyn's definition of sexual harassment, as recommended in the report. As the report points out, peer-on-peer sexual harassment is so prevalent amongst school-age children and young people that it has become normalised. That is extremely worrying. Many children and young people may not even realise that what they're experiencing is sexual harassment. So, having a clear definition is really important. It will help clarify what behaviour is considered as sexual harassment, and I hope that will help pupils feel empowered to report incidents to teachers, parents and any other organisation. I also believe that it will give clarity to those who are being confided in that the individual is being subject to sexual harassment as opposed to bullying, as an example.

The report highlights that many young people felt that there should be more education on the subject, and having a definition will be particularly helpful in delivering education on sexual harassment in schools. And I'd be keen to know if the Welsh Government has had any discussion with other agencies about adopting the same definition, because it would be joined-up working that will drive change.

According to the school list on the Everyone's Invited website, there are testimonials from pupils in every single local authority area in Wales. Moving forward, I believe that it will be essential that there is honest and regular reporting in each local authority area; schools must be actively encouraged to report incidents to the local authority; and there must be support in place for both the school and the pupil reporting peer-on-peer sexual harassment. As we know, a huge proportion of sexual harassment is carried out online. Having access to social media messaging platforms has made it much easier for pupils to both carry out harassment and to be targeted by it. A person being targeted may not even attend the same school or college as the person who is carrying out that behaviour. So, I think it would be hugely beneficial for children and young people to have some clear guidance on how to report incidents in those cases. Working together and with our children and young people is absolutely paramount. Minister, what action will the Welsh Government take to respond to the role that social media and being online has on peer-on-peer sexual harassment? 

And finally, it is essential that children are taught and understand how to respect each other, and I know that the new curriculum aims to do that, because if that doesn't happen—and this is really worrying evidence—if this is perceived as normal behaviour, those children will be the adults of tomorrow, and they will be taking forward those harmful views into life with them. So, I thank the committee very much for this, and I look forward to the Minister's response.

I think this is a really important report and I think it's really timely as well. But I think, as Laura Anne Jones said, the level of sexual harassment is so widespread that it really requires a response across society. But it really does underpin the importance of compulsory relationship and sexuality education, because young people need educating on how to keep themselves safe. These bad beasts, which we all find really convenient, parents give their children these things without realising what it gives them access to. I absolutely agree with where you cover the importance of having consistency of approach in relation to mobile phones in school, because there is absolutely no reason why anybody should have a mobile phone on while they're actually supposed to be in lessons. They can keep them in their bags so they've got them when they're going home, but they should not be appearing in school, and they should be confiscated if they appear, in my view.

I think, also, your emphasis on good record-keeping, as well as quality relationship and sexuality education, is absolutely essential, because unless schools have a trauma-informed approach to the behaviour problems that may be exhibited by a young person, or indeed their absence from school, then the school is simply not understanding what is going on here. They have simply got to be ensuring that young people know that the school is a safe place where they can tell people what is happening to them, because the evidence coming from the school where I'm a governor was that, actually, school is the safest place in their lives. Unfortunately, they are receiving harassment both at home and on public transport, for example.

I was very pleased today to get a response to a letter I wrote to Cardiff Bus about the sexual harassment that has been reported on buses, and it was a really excellent letter, saying that they take it very seriously, that their control room controls exactly what's going on on every bus, and that they are going to write to other public transport providers so that we have a whole-system approach in relation to public transport. So, I think that's really welcome.

But anyway, I thank very much the committee for its work on this, and clearly, this is something that is going to be an ongoing piece of work for us.

I call on the Minister for Education and Welsh Language, Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I would like to thank, if I may, members of the Children, Young People and Education Committee for their report. Inquiries such as this do help to keep these important conversations on top of the agenda, and I would like to mention today some of the steps that we are taking.

First of all, it's important that we don't ignore the power of the voices of children and young people who challenge the practice of the normalisation that we've discussed today—the normalisation of peer-on-peer sexual harassment. That was made particularly clear to me in a recent event staged by the Senedd cross-party group on preventing the sexual abuse of children, where I had an opportunity to hear from young people who have used their personal experiences to generate real change. And that's why it's important that we do ensure that the voices of children and young people are a central part of everything we do. And we are working with partner organisations on the best way of delivering that and agree that we do need to establish an advisory board and that they should have a full role, as Jayne Bryant requested I should do.

I also acknowledge that peer-on-peer sexual harassment is a broader social issue and that parents, carers and families have a key role to play in supporting young people. We will also be developing messages for parents and carers on how to deal with peer-on-peer sexual harassment. Schools and other settings have an important role to play in creating safe environments, helping to ensure that children and young people can enjoy healthy and safe relationships. 

Relationships and sexuality education is a statutory requirement for all pupils under the new curriculum. This will play a positive role in safeguarding and helping children and young people to understand behaviours and scenarios that could place them at risk of harm, so that they know what to do to stay safe and how to ask for help. 

Digital technologies have changed the way we all communicate, and this is especially true of young people, as we've just heard in Jenny Rathbone's contribution. Online sexual harassment encompasses a wide range of behaviours, and I recognise the challenge this presents to schools. I visited a school myself recently that has been working with boys, in that case, on understanding the impact of sharing images online, for example, and another school where girls are raising awareness with others of the online harassment they had received both in and outside school. And again, in response to the point that Joyce Watson and others have made, the 'keeping safe online' area of Hwb provides schools with information, guidance and training opportunities on a wide range of online safety issues. It's vitally important that the education workforce are provided with training and development opportunities to support them with identifying, responding to and reporting peer-on-peer sexual harassment. We'll shortly be piloting a bespoke online sexual harassment training course for education providers, which will be rolled out across Wales.

I was asked about professional learning funding. Schools are already allocated grants that are ring-fenced for professional learning so that that funding isn't at the expense of other sources of funding, as Jayne Bryant asked me to confirm. And they're in receipt of guidance as well on how they can invest in that professional learning. We'll also be reviewing the RSE resources and looking to identify further effective resources that can support the effective delivery of RSE.

There is a clear need for more robust reporting of instances of sexual harassment in education settings. We know that children and young people sometimes lack the confidence to report instances to their teachers, often because they worry that it won't be taken seriously. As such, there is a lack of knowledge of the true scale of the issue, as well as a lack of consistency, as we've been discussing, in the reporting systems, and therefore, in turn, in data collection.

I was dismayed to learn that our LGBTQ+ pupils have substantial personal experiences of verbal homophobic harassment and that this is the most common type of harassment in many schools. Any form of bullying is completely unacceptable, including harassment and bullying due to a person's sexuality or gender identity. Many of us who have grown up gay will have had our own experiences of this in school. It has no place in society, in schools or in the lives of our young people, and we are committed to changing that reality for our LGBTQ+ pupils. We are already making changes to our anti-bullying guidance, 'Rights, respect, equality', in relation to racial harassment and bullying in schools, and we will also consider how that work can be effectively widened to include robust reporting, recording and data collection of peer-on-peer sexual harassment, including homophobic harassment and bullying.

LGBTQ+ inclusion and support will also feature in new guidance to support education settings to embed a culture of inclusion, anti-discrimination and rights. It's clear from our engagement with local authorities, practitioners, teachers and young people that schools need additional guidance about how best to support LGBTQ+ children and young people, particularly those who are trans or non-binary. In response to Sioned Williams's question, the guidance is currently in development and we anticipate publishing it in spring 2023. We know peer-on-peer sexual harassment is not limited to secondary schools and we are clear that action is needed across all settings, as Jack Sargeant referred to in his contribution. A better understanding of the ways this is experienced at different ages is important to ensure we respond with appropriate and tailored interventions, so we've commissioned a thematic review by Estyn into peer-on-peer sexual harassment in the further education sector. That review is currently under way and is due to report in spring of next year. We are committed to using Estyn's recommendations to underpin a specific programme of work to tackle sexual harassment in further education. We also need a greater understanding of children's experiences of gender-based bullying or sexual harassment in primary settings, and we are currently considering the scope of this review.

Whilst further work will help to ensure we have evidence-based policy and interventions, this does not preclude us from acting now. My officials are working with a range of stakeholders, including the police, to develop a multi-agency action plan, and the plan will outline the actions the Welsh Government and our partners will take to prevent and respond to peer-on-peer sexual harassment in education settings. It will complement work on preventing and responding to child sexual abuse, including harmful sexual behaviour and child sexual exploitation, and I can confirm, in response to Joyce Watson's question, that it will adopt on a multi-agency basis the definition of 'sexual harassment' used by Estyn.

The Welsh Government is committed to the vision of ending violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence in Wales. This can have a huge impact on girls and young women, and indeed on all children and young people, which can affect their well-being and peer relationships. On 24 May, we published the VAWDASV national strategy, which increases awareness in children, young people and adults of the importance of safe, equal and healthy relationships, and empowering them to make positive personal choices. We'll be adopting a cross-Government approach to ensuring its success.

Finally, Jayne Bryant asked me to acknowledge the long-lasting impact of peer-on-peer sexual harassment, even where that is outside the definition of ACEs. This was an issue that was identified in the 2020 review. One of the recommendations was for the Government to take a more holistic view to tackling childhood adversity and trauma, and the ACEs plan work that has been under way will be built on an evidence base of ACEs, but recognise other sources of adversity, and that will include peer-to-peer sexual harassment.

I've outlined today just some of the actions we will be taking, but we will continue to listen and to work with our stakeholders and partners to ensure that we evolve our approach to ensure our work has maximum impact.

I call on the Chair of the committee to reply. Jayne Bryant.

Diolch, Deputy Llywydd, and I'd just like to thank all Members who've taken part in this debate today. I think it's been a really important one, and I really appreciate all the contributions.

I'd like to put on record first of all my thanks and the committee's thanks to the clerking and research team, who have been fantastic throughout this inquiry, as well as our outreach team, and I'd like to thank all committee members for their commitment and attention to detail in producing such an important report, and absolutely echo Laura Jones's words about the speed with which we undertook this report, and I think that goes to show the importance the committee put on this particular issue. So, I'd like to thank all Members for the work that they've done.

Also to say that James made a really important point—James Evans—about this is a matter for everybody, and that everybody affected should come forward, and our report is titled 'Everybody's affected' for that reason, and I think Estyn told us that 29 per cent of male secondary school pupils experienced harassment. Although lower than girls, that's still almost a third of all boys, which is clearly unacceptable.

Also, just to reiterate one of Sioned's points about it being such an urgent matter, and that the new curriculum sadly won't help any child currently in year 8 or above. I know I mentioned that in my opening remarks, but just to reiterate that message to the Minister.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

On the points that Jack Sargeant made, I'd firstly like to thank the petitioner for the important points raised in the petition, but perhaps it would be helpful if I just help to clarify why the committee did not feel able to extend our recommendations to primary schools. We know, and we heard in our inquiry time and again, that sexual harassment is likely to begin in primary schools, but the evidence we gathered over the course of the inquiry did not give a clear enough picture of the prevalence or the nature of sexual harassment in primary schools to make a well-informed recommendation to the Welsh Government about how to address it. The committee felt that addressing sexual harassment in the primary sector presents many different challenges to addressing it in the secondary sector, so we didn't feel confident as a committee in extending our recommendations, which are based on research on secondary-age children, to children who are much younger. So, I hope that helps to clarify why our recommendations didn't include primary school children, but, obviously, we're really pleased that that work is going on.

We heard from Joyce about, and the Minister also mentioned, the voice of young people. We did hear from young people about the solutions and what they felt needed to change. We received over 100 responses to our online survey, and those views really did shape our recommendations. The committee's inquiry also drew on the many personal anonymised testimonies on the Everyone's Invited website, and Estyn's primary evidence, which was the foundation of our inquiry. So, just to give an idea—you know, we really want to put young people's voices at the heart of everything we do.

So, I'd like to thank everybody who contributed to our inquiry. The written and oral evidence we received from everybody, the academics, charities, schools and other public bodies, was exceptionally high quality. I'd also like to place on record my thanks to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language and to the Minister for Social Justice for their constructive engagement with our inquiry and their positive response to our report. I'm really pleased that the Minister's been able to answer some of those questions put by outsiders as well to our recommendations. That's really positive; thank you.

I also say in the Chair's foreword to the report that we've asked a lot of the Welsh Government, and we have. We've asked a lot of the Welsh Government because of all the testimonies from young Welsh people on the Everybody's Invited website, submitted by pupils of schools across Wales and beyond, because of what children in schools across Wales told Estyn, and because what children in schools across Britain have been telling anyone who asks them for years and years. Schools can't be held responsible for sexual harassment. We must take responsibility for denormalising the harmful behaviours and assumptions that underpin it. But they are ideal places for that process of denormalisation to begin, and are sites for early intervention and effective, high-quality support for learners who have been harassed. My fellow committee members and I will pay close attention to the Welsh Government's implementation of the recommendations in our report to do everything we can to make sure that happens.

I've saved my biggest thanks for last. To the many young people across Wales who responded to our survey: thank you for sharing your views on what needed to change. To Ebonie, Glenn, Jake and Sophie and your lecturers: thank you for your hard work and expertise in analysing our engagement responses and producing a video summarising those findings. We appreciated your recommendations to us, and, really, all Members should see that and share it as widely as possible. As Laura Jones said in her contribution, they really challenged us when we had some ideas, so we know that their voices are so important in the work that goes on through Welsh Government now. And to our Welsh Youth Parliamentarian Ffion Williams, who so bravely, articulately and convincingly spoke to ITV Wales about her own experiences of sexual harassment in an interview following the launch of our report.

To children and young people across Wales more generally: I know this isn’t the end of the conversation, and that change will not happen overnight. But you have every right to expect that we, as your elected representatives, will do more to prevent sexual harassment in schools and colleges. It is not normal, it is not okay and it has to stop. Diolch.

The proposal is to note the committee's report. Does any Member object? No. The motion is therefore agreed.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.