When the Women and Equalities Select Committee (WESC) launched an inquiry into sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools, the results were stark. A picture emerged of girls being harassed, kissed, groped, slapped and sexually assaulted at schools across the country. They reported being pressured into sexting, being called “slags”, “sluts” and “bitches” on a regular basis and being told “boys will be boys” when they tried to complain.

Large-scal  e survey data supported this anecdotal evidence, from the revelation that 5,500 alleged sexual offences (including 600 rapes) had been reported to police as having occurred in schools over three years, to the finding that almost one in three 16- to 18-year-old girls had experienced “unwanted sexual touching” at school.

If the original report was shocking, the government response is even more so. Faced with powerful evidence that girls across the country are being subjected to abuse in one of the very places they should be safest, the government has sidestepped the report’s strongest recommendations for solving the problem and failed to offer robust alternatives. While its official response acknowledges the importance of tackling sexual harassment and violence, and makes a welcome promise to establish a new Department for Education advisory group, it stops short of adopting many of the suggested solutions.

Where the WESC recommended the creation of a statutory responsibility for schools to develop an approach to prevent and tackle sexual harassment and violence, the government argued that the existing legal framework was already strong enough, instead promising a “holistic” approach to help schools develop their own codes of practice. This in spite of the fact that the report clearly showed current measures were doing very little to protect young women, and stressed that leaving the issue to individual schools’ discretion resulted in patchy and inadequate outcomes.

In response to the recommendation that sex education be made compulsory in all schools (a step pupils, teachers and parents have long urged), the government said that sex education delivery was under review, stressing that “many schools and teachers already recognise the importance of good PSHE [personal, social and health education] education”. Yet a report this year by the Terrence Higgins Trust found that half of young people rated their sex education as “poor” or “terrible” and one in seven had not received any at all. Meanwhile 75% had never been taught about sexual consent.

Having submitted evidence to the inquiry based on hundreds of school visits and thousands of online reports received by my Everyday Sexism Project, it is devastating to see so little concrete action promised to tackle the reality of what young women are facing.

I have spoken to girls who have been left covered in bruises after sexual assaults in school common rooms, but told me they were too scared to approach a teacher because they “didn’t think anybody would believe me”. I have talked with teachers who describe an escalating culture of abuse in which they routinely witness girls being called slags, groped against their will and silenced in the classroom by sexist jibes. I have heard from boys who are bewildered and confused by the online pornography that suggests they should be aggressive and even abusive in sexual relationships, and who haven’t received any information elsewhere to offset these messages. I have seen first-hand how effective the recommendations suggested in this report might have been.

So too have those on the education frontline. Writing in the Guardian, teacher Lola Okolosie powerfully recalled her dismay at discovering that there was no framework in place to deal with a pupil experiencing physical abuse from her 13-year-old boyfriend.

But those who feel most disappointed by the government’s response are girls themselves. Young women from Girlguiding have released a statement in which they described themselves as “among the girls and young women across the country who have been severely let down by the government’s response today … We have heard girls’ stories and we have our own. We have been groped in corridors, had sexual comments yelled at us and been shown pornographic images in class.” They added: “We feel the government has missed a crucial opportunity to make schools safer for all young people.”

Earlier this year, a reader sent me a yellowing cutting of a 1981 Guardian article, in which the writer argued passionately that sex education must include information about healthy relationships and issues such as abuse in order to help prevent violence against women. More than 30 years later, we are still waiting for the government to listen.

Sexting is blighting children’s lives. Education needs to catch up

Sexting is blighting children’s lives. Education needs to catch up

Sexual harassment in schools: a guide for teachers