“Alright tight pants” says a man’s voice as the camera pans on a young woman walking through the streets of Edinburgh. “Nice puss” adds another, and “I want you”, “stuck up b*tch”… the catcalls roll on and on.

In this short film being shown to these secondary school pupils, Nadine Aisha Jassat – who wrote the poem these words are taken from based on women’s real life experiences – walks on before turning to claim back the power by looking back into the camera and “naming the problem”.

It’s an image that resonates with the 30 or so pupils of St John Ogilvie High School – mostly 16 and 17-year-old girls and boys – who are here for bystander training, a programme aiming to call out sexual harassment in school.

Statistically most of the young women in the room will experience some form of it, some may have done already. The boys here are now increasingly understanding how that feels.

It’s an idea born out of last year’s action group – the foundation of the ground breaking Equally Safe at School pilot run by Rape Crisis Scotland, introduced last year.

As 17-year-old Lauren McGregor explains, the course is helping empower the young people here. “Cat calling is something that men think of it as just a joke,” she says. But it feels demeaning to be objectified, she reflects. “Now I know I’m not the one that should feel ashamed or embarrassed about it.”

The work here is giving her the confidence to speak up. Fellow pupil Liam Innes, 16, is also finding that it gives him a new understanding. “I think a lot of men don’t think about the impact that it does have on the women they are doing it to,” he says. “It’s also about an attempt to fit in, there’s a social aspect. They are under pressure to do it and they don’t fully understand what it’s part of it. So educating them can help.”

Elina Joy, 17, who was part of last year’s action group agrees. “I think it’s great. It means that from quite a young age you can recognise it, know it’s wrong and be able to raise it. And that will lead to a safer society.” It’s also helping raise the awareness of their teachers, crucially in terms of social media, which these young people say is not simply something they can easily stop using.

It’s part of their lives – the way they chat to friends outside school hours, and it also influences the school day. “Everybody uses it,”says McGregor. “But a lot of issues come from that. When I’m going through my Instagram, you see the way boys comment can be very different from the girls.” “There’s fat shaming, slut shaming and all that,” adds McInnes. “And the thing is that comment can never totally go away because it may have been screenshotted.” Teachers, he says, have a growing understanding of that.

These pupils feel that the school increasingly has their back on this issue. Teachers don’t walk past, claims McInnes. “They speak to the victim but also explain to the person involved why it’s wrong.”

Head teacher Lorna Lawson, stressing the school has no particularly problem with the type of sexual harassment which research and anecdote suggests is found in all secondaries, is full of enthusiasm for the approach. We’ve given our young people the language and the tools to articulate what these issues are and we’ve started a real buzz of conversation around what is acceptable,” she says.

Discussions have largely focused around everything from “normalised” gendered insults and stereotypes, but in the frame is also harassment on social media and sexting. “We are trying to dig underneath it to the attitudes behind it – why is it that you think it’s ok to say that? How do we tackle it? How do you recognise harassment, how do you deal with it if you see it and what are the proper channels in a school environment,” she explains.

All staff have been fully trained in gender-based violence, some of that run in collaboration with pupils from the action group. There is a revised bullying policy, as well as a genderbased violence policy, and a women in science group, as well as this newly proposed bystander programme.

“The most important thing to me is education in its widest sense, getting them to question, and give them the language to raise this, how are you going to talk about this to others,” adds Lawson.

“We’ve not eradicated a problem because it’s societal. But so much learning has taken place and we have so many ideas about how we want to progress with this work.” Her staff agree, claiming that the impact of the last year’s work is already clear.

Physics teacher Eric Smith admits that the training has “opened his eyes” to issues like sexting and interaction on social media, admitting he was previously “quite naive”. Many other issues raised are already on his radar however, with only five girls in this male-dominated Physics classes: “You see that when boys are grouped together they behave differently to they might on their own.

“If they are slagging each other off they will use female terms as an insult or even homophobic terms. So I’ve always had to say that language is unacceptable, that’s not how to refer to people.”

But yet, claim teachers, a light touch is needed when dealing with young people. This is about helping offenders understand what they are doing wrong, challenging attitudes rather than just words, shining a light on the bigger issues and helping educate them in the broadest sense.

“I would say you just don’t hear as much negative language coming out instinctively,” adds Smith of the changes seen in the last year. Elizabeth Sutherland, biology teacher and women in science group co-ordinator chimes in: “Once the children have clicked on, they really get it. There are positive role models out there through things like the #MeToo movement.”

It’s about opening up discussion, adds history teacher Nic Craig, exploring both the legalities of things like sexting and crucially, why equality matters. “This is a journey that we are in for the long haul,” she says.