Single-sex schools ‘equip girls to fight harassment’

WOMEN who attended all- girls’ schools are best placed to challenge sexual harassment because they have not experienced it in the classroom, according to a top head.

Charlotte Avery, headmistress of St Mary’s School, Cambridge, said that being spared unwanted attention from boys means girls are not conditioned to accept it from a young age and are more likely to speak out when it happens later in life.

Last year, MPs on the women and equalities committee found almost a third of 16 to 18-year- old girls had experienced unwanted sexual touching at school.

But Mrs Avery, who is also the president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said single sex schools helped girls develop the confidence to stand up to such harassment. She added: ‘There isn’t any sense of it being normalised, because they don’t see it, because it is simply not there.

‘So I think they are then possibly surprised when they hear about it.

‘And then when they go out and meet men and indeed women who have been at co-ed schools, they have the confidence to be able to call it out, because it is something that is different to them.’

It comes after a top girls’ school found itself at the centre of historical abuse allegations after asking former pupils to contribute to a drama project about harassment. Two alumni of St Paul’s Girls’ school in London came forward last week to say they were abused as pupils.