TDI have been very excited to team up with educational charity and qualifications provider NCFE to consider the subject of sexual harm in learning settings as part of NCFE's podcast series.
Over the course of six episodes, NCFE's Sarah Dagger hosts Debba, Sheryl and Matt from TDI to discuss how harms can arise in schools, colleges, further education, and training settings - and what we can do as board members, staff, learners and caregivers to make our settings safer.
The issue of sexual harm in education has come to the fore in recent years, partly as a result of increasing public resistance to harassment seen in things like the #metoo movement. In education settings, this resistance expressed itself through the Everyone's Invited initiative where learners came together to give accounts of the harms they had suffered in what should have been safe environments. This led to Ofsted, the education inspectorate, to revise their inspection guidelines, challenging education providers to proactively act against sexual harms such as peer-on-peer abuse and online bullying and harassment.
Combining NCFE's 170 years of knowledge and expertise around education, and TDI's 30 years at the forefront of the fight against sexual offending and sexual harm, the series sets out to help governing bodies, senior leadership teams, staff and other stakeholders understand the challenges they face and empower them to take steps to make education safer for everyone.
The six episodes consider the big picture of what sexual offending and sexual harm are and what they look like; what the laws around sexual offending and harm are; what regulators are looking for; how technology changes risks around harm; who is accountable for preventing harm and how; and what we can all do to make our spaces and communities safer.
We are all very excited to be bringing you these podcasts, which are available through NCFE's podcast feed. We'll also be linking through to them below as they are released.
We explore some of the issues in this series in more depth in our Open Courses on 'Peer-on-peer sexual harm: Challenges and responses', and 'Technology-enabled sexual harms'. Open Courses are four-hour online courses, open to individuals and small organisations. For larger organisations we are able to deliver Bespoke Courses, tailored to your needs.
We're always excited to receive feedback, and questions, so if you'd like to talk through any of the issues raised and how we can tackle sexual offending together, please get in touch.