Schools must be given clearer guidance on how to deal with peer sexual abuse among pupils, charities have called for.

Rape Crisis and other charities wrote to England's Education Secretary Bridget Philipson and Safeguarding Secretary Jesse Phillips last week, calling on the government to step in and provide clearer laws on how schools in England and Wales should address sexual violence. Guidance when the victim and alleged perpetrator are students.

The letter said many victims were "failed" and "re-traumatized" by schools, which often explained police's failure to seek convictions as "just a return to normalcy."

The charities warn that peer abuse is increasingly common and affects young children, including in primary schools, partly due to the prevalence of online pornography. They believe some schools are mischaracterizing serious aggression as "exploratory play" or "age-related exploration".

An investigation by MPs in 2016 found 600 rapes reported in schools over three years.

In 2021, campaign group Everybody's Invited collected thousands of testimonies of abuse in UK schools, the same year Ofsted said sexual harassment was now a normal feature of school life and students were often too lazy to report it.

Rape Crisis chief executive Ciara Bergman said: "It needs to be clear that children who have been sexually assaulted or abused in school are entitled to a supportive response from the school, regardless of any criminal justice process."

She added: "No form of play should be harmful to children. Dismissing sexual abuse in this way represents a misunderstanding of the nature and impact of peer sexual abuse."

Last year, Gemma*, from London, was devastated when her eight-year-old son revealed that a nine-year-old male classmate had attacked him. "He was frustrated and scared," she said. "The other boy told him not to say anything."

When Gemma spoke to her son's headteacher, she felt the school was "trying to minimize" what had happened. The principal told her not to worry as the school was "very good at dealing with interpersonal difficulties".

Gemma said: "I told her: 'That's not what happened. This was sexual assault.'

The school gave her son a safety plan that required him to arrive at school 20 minutes early and leave through a different door to avoid contact with boys. "It's a complete joke. The plan is basically to sanction my son," Gemma said.

Gemma left the school with her son. Since he left, a girl at the school reported being sexually assaulted by the same boy.

Maggie* from Rochdale told observer Six months ago, her nine-year-old autistic daughter was asked by her school principal to "hug or shake hands" with a classmate who she said sexually assaulted her.

"A written statement from the school confirmed that another child admitted to touching my daughter and threatening to hit any teacher in the face if she told them," she said.

Andrew Lord, a lawyer at law firm Leigh Day who co-signed last week's letter to ministers, said there was often "genuine shock" in primary schools when a pupil disclosed sexual abuse. ".

Lord said he sympathized with the school, which he said was struggling to support the two students. But he said he often worked with "desperate families" who were "left to deal with their children's traumatic disclosures on their own or were put on long waiting lists for mental health support".

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said schools "play a vital role in preventing harmful and worrying sexual behavior and dealing with incidents when they occur".

Whiteman supported calls for regular reviews of existing government guidance on these issues, adding that school staff also needed "high-quality, funded training" and "adequate support services to seek advice".

*name changed