Parents at private boys’ schools back more teaching of sexual consent

Parents at Sydney boys’ schools say they are concerned about the culture surrounding their sons and back calls for the schools to do more teaching about sexual consent.

Credit: John Shakespeare

Many spoke to The Sun-Herald on condition of anonymity to protect their children from reprisals or embarrassment.

One mother whose son is in year 9 at a private boys’ school in the eastern suburbs said it was “horrifying” to read the hundreds of testimonies from current and former schoolgirls who had been assaulted by their male peers published by former Kambala student Chanel Contos last week.

“Regardless of what school [my son] goes to, it makes me concerned about his understanding of what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate,” she said. “As a parent, you want your child to make the right decisions.”

She said the petition had made her aware of how widespread the problem was and she believed it had taken the school by surprise as well. The mother requested her son’s school not to be named because the issue was broader than just one school.

She believed schools should start teaching about sexual consent from year 7 or even primary school, while single-sex schools should ensure students had regular opportunities to mix with the opposite gender from an early age. She said there were few private co-ed schools in the eastern suburbs and she would welcome it if her son’s school started accepting female students.

The mother said parents also had a role in preventing sexual assault given that the common factor in many of the victims’ stories was the assaults were occurring in parties at private homes. In her experience, unsupervised parties with alcohol started as early as year 7 when children are 12.

“There does seem to be access to parties at a very early age because people live in big houses and have a lot of money,” she said. “I wonder if that’s the bigger issue than the private school or public school - I think it’s just the access to money, access to alcohol, access to drugs and unsupervised parties are quite common.”

She noted excessive alcohol intake was also a problem for adults and was a factor in the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in Parliament House.

While families and broader society also played a role in shaping young people, she said schools were crucial because teenagers spent more waking time there than at home. Based on the questions she got at home, she believed the teaching needed to be more detailed, perhaps including scenarios similar to the way learner drivers are tested on the road rules.

Melody Murphy has a son in year 7 at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill. He has only been at the school a month but based on what she has seen so far, she believes the school will impart strong values to help him grow up to be a good man and she has no complaints about the school.

She agrees with the petition calling for sexual consent education to take place earlier at schools in general, suggesting it be taught along with reproductive science to students in year 6 and then reinforced every year after that.

“It needs to be taught before they’re sexually active,” Ms Murphy said. “I don’t know what the average age is that that boys or girls are becoming sexually active these days but I can imagine that it’s probably younger than what parents want them to be.”

A father of a year 9 boy at the Kings School in Parramatta said the problem was a culture of elitism and entitlement nurtured at top private schools.

“They teach these kids they’re the best, they’re the chosen ones, they’re going to run Australia, they’re going to conquer the world,” he said. “They can’t teach that and also teach that the person next to you who may be female or may be black is equal to you.”

The father said he felt compelled to send his son to an elite school to “buy a brand” that would open doors in his son’s career and chose Kings because it was more ethnically diverse than many other private boys and co-ed schools. He and his wife tried to teach about the world and sensitivity to others but he worried it could be a “losing battle”, saying he had seen the same entitled behaviour among adult men in the corporate world.

Kings School was contacted for comment but did not respond.

Another parent contacted The Sun-Herald to say she had pulled her children out of St Catherine’s and Cranbrook because of the cultures and sent them to public schools.

“I can tell you that there is much better work being done on behaviour and consent, not to mention lots of other areas of teen development, in many local schools,” she said.

St Catherine’s said last week it would work with nearby boys’ school Waverley College to introduce additional education for students and parents on the issue of sexual assault.

Cranbrook headmaster Nicholas Sampson wrote to parents last week, promising to review pastoral programs and look for partnerships with neighbouring girls’ schools to enable the students to learn alongside each other “beyond the pressure-cooker of the party scene and other unhelpful influences”.

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