Student barrage teachers with sexist and racist slurs

Shocking new survey results show female teachers are subjected to sexist and pornographic slurs and propositioned by male students.

Female teachers say they are routinely subjected to sexual harrasment.

Female teachers are routinely propositioned, threatened with rape and subjected to sexist and pornographic slurs by male students, a new national survey reveals.

Children as young as grade three are responsible for sexually moaning, groaning and grunting at teachers, along with asking for nudes and calling them sexually suggestive names.

The national survey of 1000 teachers by female advocacy group Collective Shout in partnership with parenting author and educator Maggie Dent, reveals widespread, entrenched and normalised sexual behaviour in Australian schools.

One in two teachers in schools and kinders — almost all female — reported they were subjected routinely to sexual harassment, mostly by male students.

Eight in 10 respondents reported a rise in sexually harmful behaviour.

The report, released on Monday, states that many ­female teachers do not feel safe at work.

Boys in years 9 and 10 were identified as the primary aggressors against teachers in more than half of all reported incidents.

Teachers also reported dealing with multiple disclosures from adolescent victims of harmful sexual behaviour by their male peers.

They also reported:

CHILDREN as young as year 2 accessing and sharing pornographic content through personal devices or social media; and

GIRLS in years 5 and 6 coerced into sending sexual images by their male peers.

Teachers attributed the rise in harmful sexual behaviour to early exposure to pornography, the negative effect of social media influencers and societal sexist attitudes.

Some reported declines in their mental health, others took long-term leave or left the teaching profession.

The Sexual Harassment of Teachers report contains six recommendations, including clearer definitions and guidance, student codes of conduct signed by students, more education and training, and more engagement with parents.

The survey findings show 47 per cent of teachers who responded have been sexually harassed at school, with eight in 10 harassed by a student.

Teachers report the behaviour is often dismissed as jokes or “boys being boys”.

Collective Shout movement director Melinda Tankard Reist said the findings showed schools were “sites of abuse”.

She said the stories she heard this year were “the worst I’ve heard in more than a decade of engagement with public and private schools”.

“There needs to be strong, national, uniform response,” she said

Ms Dent said she urged “parents and other caring adults in our kids’ lives to have awkward conversations with their kids, and not just expect schools to be responsible for addressing this behaviour from some boys”.