Half of girls hear it every week. Schools now have a plan and £16 million
What happened
On 26 September 2026, Education Secretary Lucy Powell set out a plan for how schools in England should tackle misogyny. This follows the misogyny taskforce that met for the first time earlier in September. That was the group being formed. This is what it is asking schools to actually do. The approach is described as 'whole-school'. That phrase matters, because it is the opposite of a one-off assembly. The idea is that what pupils are taught in lessons, how staff respond in corridors, what parents are told, and what after-school activities are on offer should all point the same way. The plan includes: - A strengthened Relationships, Sex and Health Education curriculum, known as RSHE - Practical guides and training resources for teachers - Support programmes for parents - Pastoral support and positive enrichment activities - Media literacy teaching, so pupils can judge what they see online rather than absorb it There is money and structure attached. £150,000 is going to a new RSHE expert advisory group to develop teaching resources. Two pilot programmes are being launched through a £16 million Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention Programme. And there is a partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund aimed at 12 to 16-year-olds, focused on respect and resilience. The announcement is explicit that part of the aim is countering harmful online influences, naming Andrew Tate as an example.
Why this matters
The reason this is being treated as urgent is in the survey data the department cites. Half of girls — 50% — reported hearing misogynistic comments from other pupils every week. That figure comes from a survey in May. And 30% of pupils in Years 10 and 11 said they had recently heard comments that made them worried about girls' safety. Read those two numbers together and something becomes clear. This is not a small number of extreme incidents. It is a weekly background noise for half of the girls in the country's schools. And a third of older teenagers — boys included — have heard things that worried them. That second figure is the more hopeful one, oddly. It means most pupils are not comfortable with this. They notice it. They do not like it. Which means the problem is not that young people broadly agree with what is being said — it is that a loud minority sets the tone and the rest do not know how to push back. That is exactly the kind of problem a whole-school approach can shift, because it changes what feels normal rather than trying to argue individuals out of a position. There is a health dimension too. Girls who feel unsafe at school do worse at school. Anxiety, avoidance and low mood follow. And the attitudes formed at fourteen shape relationships, and relationship harm, for decades.
What the evidence actually says
It is worth being honest about what is known and what is not. The figures cited — 50% of girls hearing misogynistic comments weekly, and 30% of Year 10 and 11 pupils recently hearing comments that worried them about girls' safety — come from the Department for Education's own announcement, drawing on a survey from May. The interventions themselves are, for the most part, not yet proven. Two of them are explicitly pilots, funded through the £16 million Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention Programme. A pilot is a test. Some pilots work and some do not, and the point of running them is to find out which. The broader research picture on prevention education is mixed but not empty. Programmes that run over time, involve the whole school, and include boys as participants rather than as a problem to be managed tend to do better than one-off talks. Short, lecture-style sessions have a poor record. The design described here — curriculum plus staff training plus parents plus pastoral support — is closer to the approach that has evidence behind it. Media literacy is the piece with the clearest logic and the least long-term data. Teaching young people to recognise when content is designed to provoke them is plainly sensible. Whether it changes behaviour at scale is still being established. The £150,000 for the expert advisory group is a small sum in education terms. It funds people to write resources, not the delivery itself.
Practical advice
If you are a parent or carer, this is the part that matters most, because schools cannot do it alone. 1. Ask your child's school what it is actually doing. Not whether it has a policy — what happens when a pupil says something misogynistic in a corridor. The answer tells you a great deal. 2. Watch what the algorithm serves, not just what your child searches for. Most young people do not go looking for this content. It arrives. Sit with them and look at their feed together, without making it an interrogation. 3. Ask questions instead of issuing verdicts. 'Why do you think he says that?' and 'Who makes money when you get angry about this?' get further than 'that's disgusting, turn it off'. Banning a figure tends to make them more interesting. 4. Talk to boys as people you trust, not suspects. A lot of this content succeeds because it offers young men status and certainty at an age when they feel short of both. Dismissing them pushes them towards it. 5. If your daughter tells you she hears this weekly, believe her, and say so out loud. Half of girls are reporting exactly that. She is not being oversensitive. 6. If it is affecting sleep, eating, school attendance or mood, treat that as a health matter. Speak to your GP. Anxiety and low mood in teenagers are treatable, and school avoidance is easier to turn around early. 7. Know where to go for help beyond school. Childline (0800 1111) and, for parents, the NSPCC helpline (0808 800 5000) are both free.
What to know
The Education Secretary has set out a whole-school plan for tackling misogyny in schools in England, following the misogyny taskforce that met for the first time earlier this month. It covers strengthened RSHE teaching, teacher training resources, parent programmes, pastoral support, enrichment activities and media literacy. It comes with £150,000 for a new RSHE expert advisory group, two pilots funded through a £16 million Violence Against Women and Girls Prevention Programme, and a partnership with the Youth Endowment Fund for 12 to 16-year-olds. The case for acting is the data: 50% of girls said they hear misogynistic comments from other pupils weekly, and 30% of Year 10 and 11 pupils had recently heard comments that worried them about girls' safety. Two of the main measures are pilots, which means their effect is not yet known. What the research does suggest is that sustained, whole-school work that includes boys as participants beats one-off assemblies. For parents, the highest-value things are asking the school what actually happens in practice, looking at your child's feed together, and asking questions rather than delivering verdicts. Sources: Department for Education, 'Education Secretary unveils plan for schools to tackle misogyny', 26 September 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/education-secretary-unveils-plan-for-schools-to-tackle-misogyny ; Office for Equality and Opportunity, 'Businesses lead pledge to champion women’s equality and root out misogyny', 26 September 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/businesses-lead-pledge-to-champion-womens-equality-and-root-out-misogyny ; Department for Education, 'Relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education', https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a doctor, pharmacist or other qualified healthcare professional.
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