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Leong said the NSW government was clearly in denial about the scale of the problem.
“[They] have failed to listen to the calls of young women and survivors if they think there is nothing more they need to do to improve how holistic consent education is delivered in NSW schools.”
Hayley Foster,CEO of the Full Stop Foundation,said she expected a greater focus in the area,following the national discussion about attitudes toward consent and rape culture among teenagers.
“Survivors and particularly young people who have been impacted in this area are no longer staying silent,” she said,adding women aged 15 to 19 were most likely to be victims of sexual assault.
“We can’t wait,because we see every day on our counselling lines the devastating impact of not having this in schools.”
Elaheh Taheri,a survivor advocate with the foundation,was a complainant in a sexual assault case – arising outside school – at the end of her HSC year at a public high school in 2016.
Now studying secondary education,she was not confident what was on offer in NSW schools was working to dispel preconceptions about the “perfect victim” and the complexities of consent.
“There was absolutely no mention of consent when I was in high school,and,unfortunately,there are teachers who treat topics like consent education and mental health like boxes to tick,” she said.
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Last year,Western Australia and Queensland each updated their state school curriculum in light of the new national guidelines,implementing topics such as gender respect from early primary school.
Like NSW,Victoria also determined its existing curriculum was sufficient. However,Contos said she believed the Victorian curriculum was more comprehensive.
Reflecting on the campaign,Contos said she was encouraged that the national curriculum meant all independent schools would now have to teach consent education:Teach Us Consent began with Contos asking about her network’s experiences at three elite Sydney private schools.
“Now independent schools have to teach consent,which was kind of the big win,” she said,admitting the success of consent education in private schools had been “leadership dependent”.
“It depends on how much the individual principal cares about this issue,” she said.
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