Stop 1 in 3 schoolgirls experiencing sexist violence in UK schools

Last year, my six year old daughter came home saying that six of the boys in her class hadn't been being very nice to her. They were chasing her round the playground trying to catch her and break her glasses. The next day, when I mentioned the problem to her teacher, the school told her to stop wearing her glasses. Over the coming weeks, the boys targeted her for wearing a cardigan, and then for queuing up in the dinner queue. They punched her, kicked her, called her names, touched her genitals to frighten her, pulled her off climbing frames in the playground and finally tripped her and she smacked her head and suffered concussion. All the time, the school refused to accept she was being bullied, and finally put her in a special needs therapy class. They pretended that most of the attacks were not happening, despite two other girls being attacked at the same time. Her doctor wrote to the school twice, saying that she had stopped eating, had begun bedwetting and was gradually more and more terrified to be left by me in school, saying she didn't feel safe. Finally, after four months of complaints to the school, the board of governors, Ofsted, the local council, my MP, social services, the police and the Department of Education who all said they weren't responsible for behaviour in schools, I managed to get her moved to another school where she could go back to being educated again.

According to the NSPCC, 1 in 3 schoolgirls in the UK experience sexist violence on school premises which, when they report, are told isn't serious and is ignored. But sexist violence in the playground turns into sexist violence in the home, leading to 2 women a week being murdered, 2 women a week killing themselves and 210 a week trying to kill themselves in despair.

As a country, we need to start showing zero tolerance to sexist violence in the way we do racist or homophobic violence and this starts in the playground.

Make sexist violence a recordable crime in school and make Ofsted publish figures school by school on reported incidents of sexism so that parents can assess a school's track record on gender based violence. Because girls are human too.