By Ashlene Robinson and Sophie Scott (Upper Sixth)
Thursday 3rd March marked the first anniversary of Sarah Everard’s death; a woman that was sadly abducted and murdered by a serving male police officer as she walked home in South London. The following day, our Sixth Form common room was filled with conversation about the tragedy. This was an emotional and concerning time for a lot of students in our school. In response to this, and the rise of the Everyone’s Invited campaign, a group of Sixth Form students got together to see how we can educate and support our community around these issues. All of us feel passionate about changing how things are for women in society.
We felt that the most important people to address first were the Year 9 students at our school. Our main goals were to debunk common myths for the younger students, which are often taken as truth - things largely to do with victim blaming. We started off with an assembly where we asked the students statements like “are you aware of the Everyone’s Invited campaign?”. We then ran smaller sessions with the Year 9s, which were coordinated by the Upper Sixth students. These sessions were characterised by open, honest conversations about the concerns and worries of the Year 9s and what they want to change within school and in the wider community. We also answered any questions they had relating to the topics of the previous assembly. Finally, we finished off with another assembly where we played a ‘true or false’ game, continuing to debunk these myths. We received really positive feedback on these sessions and hope the students found them useful. Molly Jewers (Upper Sixth) said: “it was really exciting to get more interaction with the younger students in the school. We hope they got a lot out of the sessions and feel that they have friendly faces to talk to from the Sixth Form.”
Taking on the feedback from our Year 9 students, a lot of them felt the need for boys to also be educated on these issues. So, we collaborated with Bedford School who kindly invited us to deliver a session during one of their Year 9 Citizenship mornings. The session began with a talk all about being an active bystander and standing up against rape culture. We aimed to challenge the boys, to become active bystanders and work in a team alongside their female peers. To highlight the importance of unity between the schools the assembly was delivered by us and two Lower Sixth Bedford School students. The students were then split into breakout groups, which were each run by one student from BGS and one student from Bedford School. There were lots of open discussions and opportunities for questions as we ran through different scenarios the Year 9 boys might find themselves in - from hearing rumours to being sent inappropriate images in a group chat. Alice Swallow, Head of Citizenship at Bedford School, said in response to the sessions that they “brought in big change and initiated an exciting way to deliver some of our PSHE”.
We all learned a lot from this experience; It was eye-opening and empowering for us as Sixth Form students who were running the sessions and talks, as we realised there is a desire from both schools to create stronger relationships and to address these issues. We all hope these joint citizenship and PSHE sessions between both schools can continue, hopefully expanding across year groups too.
