Education minister pushes for consent education in all schools nationwide

On Saturday the body representing some of Melbourne’s most prestigious Catholic schools – including St Kevin’s College, Parade College, St Mary’s College, St Joseph’s College and St Bernard’s College – said the petition had pushed them to take action and signalled they would work with parents to address the issue.

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“The powerful testimonies provided by the many young women in the online petition are disturbing and are an indictment on societal decency,” said Edmund Rice Education Australia executive director Dr Craig Wattam.

“All of us – schools, families, and the broader community – must carefully consider and revisit issues pertaining to sex education. More specifically, sexual consent education is required for both young men and women and we need to be providing this education in early adolescence.”

Peter Houlihan, principal of all-boys De La Salle College in Melbourne’s south-east, said the school was taking the petition extremely seriously and would speed up plans to formalise messages around sexual consent for students.

“The time is now here,” Mr Houlihan said. “We will need to start formulating some formal messages and some formal inclusions in our school program around sexual consent and the dangers of not understanding that.”

While Mr Houlihan said his school had been running a respectful relationships program for years, it was evident that consent needed to be addressed further.

“I do think the ante needs to be upped. I think it’s society’s view, it’s certainly ours, that we need to be a bit more strategic with how we approach the issue of consent, with respect for our kids of course, but also respect for young women in general.”

Ms Contos, who is studying for her masters in gender and education at University College London, launched the petition on February 19 after a discussion with friends from three other schools last year revealed they all been sexually assaulted or raped in their school years.

She previously told The Age that the first school talk she received about consent happened when she was in year 10.

“Me and my friends left that room and realised we had been raped … It was a life-changing talk, but it happened too late,” she said.

Many of the accounts, which are recorded anonymously via a Google document and have not been independently verified, report instances where young people felt that a lack of consent education was to blame for their sexual abuse.

Among those who anonymously recounted their stories were two students who said they previously attended Geelong Grammar, south-west of Melbourne.

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The Victorian government has offered its respectful relationship program to non-government schools and as of last year 227 Catholic schools and 56 independent schools had taken up the offer.

The program, which was brought about by the Royal Commission into Family Violence, specifically addresses the issue of consent from year 7 onward, but the Education Minister flagged he was open to calls for even earlier intervention.

“No state or territory, including Victoria, should be complacent in making sure consent is taught well in classrooms. If we need to make changes to ensure that the issue of consent is taught in a better way that makes a real difference, then we stand ready to make those changes,” said Mr Merlino.

“It’s a program that works and goes directly to the issue of understanding consent, and I think there is real value in it being rolled out nationwide.”