News It Happens: Talks for Students and Parents 03.02.2022

On Tuesday, as part of our PSHE programme, we were delighted to welcome Dr Eleanor Draiger from the organisation It Happens to speak to our Lower Sixth students and to run a webinar for parents.

It Happens are a team of experts and professionals who design age-appropriate workshops on topics such as pornography, sexting, and consent, who have been running educational talks at Godolphin and Latymer tailored for each of our individual year-groups. Having external expert speakers delivering up-to-date and relevant information in an open and honest fashion can help take the awkwardness out of these sensitive topics so that our students can ask the many questions they have – in a safe space. Describing their approach to working with teenagers, It Happens explain, ‘We don’t tell them NOT to do these things. We say ‘it happens… so let’s talk about it’. Students are helped to recognise potential problems and to make good choices and to understand the importance of respect, gender stereotypes, equality, healthy relationships, critical thinking and consent culture.

We were delighted that over 100 parents joined Dr Draeger, who is a highly experienced sexual health doctor, for the evening webinar where she examined why relationships and sex education is so important and shared very helpful advice and guidance about how parents can discuss these topics with their daughters. Dr Draeger emphasised the importance of giving children the confidence to ask questions at home about these topics if they need to, and also the importance of parents and the school working together to keep children safe. Dr Draeger approached these complex topics with a sensitive balance of factual detail, warmth and humour which inspired confidence, and feedback from parents on the talk described it as ‘brilliant’, ‘really helpful advice’, ‘amazing’.

We look forward to continuing our work with It Happens and hope to run another talk for parents in the future.