Last week the children’s commissioner published a new report called Evidence on pornography’s influence on harmful sexual behaviour among children.
This report is a follow-up to one published in January that revealed the extent to which pornography has become normalised among young people, such as the fact that 27 per cent of children have seen online pornography by the age of 11.
The latest report expands on this by examining the harm this causes to young people, and makes recommendations about what needs to change.
As such, it is vital reading for anyone in a position of pastoral leadership in a school, or who is head of a personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education or relationships and sex education (RSE) programme. There are a number of particularly important points that emerge from the report:
1. The prevalence of pornography
Firstly, it is really important that all teachers and parents understand the scale of the challenge we face in protecting young people.
The report presents the alarming statistic that “the four largest online pornography sites…received a combined 11 billion visits a month. This is greater than the number of monthly visits to Amazon, LinkedIn, Netflix, Zoom and eBay combined”.
What’s more, social media sites such as Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram can feature explicit content that children may see - a fact many parents and teachers may find surprising.
Here is where educating children, and their parents, is crucial. Assemblies and PSHE explaining the dangers of social media, even for students in younger year groups, are vital given how young most students are when they start using social media.
This should be followed up by communication with parents so that they have up-to-date information about the social media being used by their children.
2. The growing acceptance of sexual violence
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the report is how it shows that extreme material viewed online is feeding through to increasingly extreme sexualised behaviour among our young people.
For instance, in research almost half of young people aged 16 to 21 stated that girls expected sex to involve physical aggression and 42 per cent said that girls enjoyed physically aggressive sex acts.
As the report states, “a growing body of evidence suggests that pornography plays an active role in the shaping and acting out of sexual attitudes and behaviours”.
This shows how vital it is for schools and parents to talk to young people and educate them in a really open and honest way, and that pretending this is not an issue is not helpful.
3. Sexual violence is largely a male problem
It is absolutely right that sex education, and the wider conversations about sex, should not look to treat all men as potential predators.
That said, 97 per cent of the children referred to harmful sexual behaviour support services in the UK were male, and 92 per cent of the children accused of child sexual abuse in the UK were male.
While some commentators have been quick to see movements such as Everyone’s Invited and discussions about “toxic masculinity” as unfair, these figures surely show, as the report says, “the importance of addressing society’s normalisation of male power and sexual aggression in the prevention of harmful sexual behaviour”.
This is where honest and open lessons about consent are crucial, whether run in-house or with external organisations like Everyone’s Invited or the Schools Consent Project.
4. Schools are a key part of the answer
One of the key recommendations of this report is a reiteration of the need for “high-quality relationships, sex and health education”.
Key to this, of course, is that those who teach the content are actually good at teaching it, so the idea of “an NVQ in RSE to prepare teachers to deliver sensitive curriculum topics” is excellent.
Furthermore, a proposal for a qualification for safeguarding leads to equip them to oversee the school RSE course is also positive and one that should be taken up.
Given the endemic nature of the problem of sexual harassment and violence highlighted by the Ofsted report of 2021, this report also makes the suggestion that ‘“every school should have a policy for preventing sexual harassment and violence, which should include preventing online perpetration of abuse and harassment”.
The only aspect of this that makes us pause for thought is that, while it is absolutely right that schools must support and educate children in this crucial area, schools again are being expected to take on almost the entire burden of responsibility for how young people are brought up and behave.
There is almost no discussion of the role that parents and families might play in all of this, and while that is not addressed, schools remain entirely responsible for their students even though they spend much less than half of their time actually in school.
Clearly, though, schools have to accept that they have a role to play in educating children in this area, and it is vital that they are aware of the scale of the issue and how it is influencing young people.
Luke Ramsden is deputy head and senior safeguarding lead of an independent school. He is on LinkedIn
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