Nice bum, Miss: Why we need to get tough with boys at school

I begged my daughter not to become a teacher. There’s plenty of honour in the profession, plenty of reward, I said, but little respect.

Now 15 years in, she loves it. But it’s getting harder – and more dangerous – than even an anxious mother imagines (when do you stop worrying about your children? Not yet).

We must urgently act: as parents, as educators, and even as politicians. We have a teacher shortage and no way to address it unless we fix school culture.

Here’s where we are today. One in four teachers feels unsafe at work, says Fiona Longmuir of Monash University. That makes them want to leave teaching. Years ago now, she and her colleagues set out to find out why teachers desert the profession. Here’s their crucial finding on safety: “The overwhelming issue was about the sense of conflict between the rights of someone to a safe workplace and the rights of a child to an education.”

Teaching is meant to be a family-friendly profession, but other Monash researchers say that’s now far from the truth. What drew women to teaching is no longer. The hours are no longer short, if they ever really were. When my daughter works at her school during the holidays to get ahead for the next term, I fear for her safety. Think I’m overreacting? Then think about Stephanie Scott, the bride-to-be snatched and slaughtered as she worked over the Easter “break” on the eve of her wedding. Why was she at work then? She wanted her substitute to have everything she needed. That’s what teaching requires.

Women are rushing to leave the teaching workforce. It’s not just that your children are awful (and my god, they are). It’s also because schools offer no structures to support women. Make a complaint about a student and that student is likely to get a virtual slap on the wrist, even when he threatens to rape a teacher.

I’ve spoken to a number of experts on how to fix the problem. Clare Walker battled appalling values and behaviour and has the lived experience of trying to change the culture at an all-boys school. It’s now nearly two years ago to the day, on the premises of elite private school St Andrew’s Cathedral School, since Lilie James was murdered by a man she’d rejected. The murderer was a former student and a coach at St Andrew’s. Walker’s boss, Shore principal John Collier, had come from St Andrew’s, had known the man and made him a prefect at SACS, in fact.

As Walker bravely shared on Monday, male senior school leaders did not back her up. They ignored her. She was right and they were wrong. And these are the men in charge of the next generation of entitled men.

It’s not just the teachers, of course. Imagine how a young girl in a class feels – fears – when she hears a male classmate threaten to rape a teacher. Is she next? Imagine how it feels when she starts getting dick pics in year 7.

Here’s what we must do, say researchers. All schools need more women in leadership. There are plenty of women in teaching – about 78 per cent of the workforce. But more women principals, more women head teachers. Definitely more women on school councils, boards, parent bodies. Shore’s council had three women.

Not one reached out to Walker during the torturous experience of trying to get Collier to listen (he’s leaving at the end of the year. Good). Shore’s not the only private school with a weird parent body set up (including six actual Anglican ministers who did nothing for Walker either. I thought clergy were meant to be all about pastoral care). Sydney Grammar has separate bodies for mothers and fathers. Guess which one runs the canteen?

We need tough penalties on students and male colleagues. Real respectful relationships education. Schools must keep track of sexual harassment and sexual assaults. Governments must release those figures. Both the public school and private school unions for teachers tell me they don’t keep figures. But one union rep tells me that sexual harassment in schools is soaring.

I do not think SACS has ever been called to account for this tragedy, for their contribution to the making of a murder. When I sent a question to the Coroner’s court earlier this year, asking why a representative of the school had not been called to the inquest into James’ death, I was told it wasn’t appropriate to ask. Maybe. But the behaviour of the murderer in the lead-up was observed by staff and students at the school. The more we know, the more likely we are to prevent this from happening in the future.

Griffith University’s Patrick O’Leary, professor in the Australian Research Council Centre for Elimination of Violence Against Women, says there must be much more accountability in school leadership for women’s safety. He also says that we must start engaging with boys and young men as allies in supporting gender equity and respect rather than framing it as them giving up power. “It’s about how they can benefit from it,” he says.

One day, my daughter was welcoming students into her classroom. A teenage boy saunters in. He says to her: “I like your arse, Miss.”

She replies, battle-wearied but, like her dad, swift on her feet. “I’d like yours on a chair, eyes to the front.”

But that’s nothing. A friend of hers revealed a student threatened to come to her house and rape her. That boy did not get suspended. They never get suspended for comments like those. And it’s schools all over. Not just the elite boys’ schools where misogyny is permitted to blossom and flourish, but at religious schools, at public schools. It’s everywhere.

What is your school doing to stamp it out? What is the culture doing to stamp it out? What are you doing to stamp it out? It is no longer enough to say “not all men”. Maybe not – but enough men to make women and girls fear for their safety. It’s not just an education problem. It’s a you problem.

I can only imagine what John Collier said in his welcome back speech to staff yesterday, but I bet maybe 30 seconds, along the lines of: I hope Clare can move on now.

Yes, she can. But all boys and men must move on too, to a better way of being.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist.

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