Teachers to discuss impact of pornography on pupils at conference | Education

Teachers will discuss the “dehumanising” impact pornography has on college students at a nationwide conference this week.

Educators attending the National Education Union’s (NEU) occasion in Bournemouth are anticipated to elevate considerations over “the prevalence of pornography which shows the harmful and humiliating treatment of women”.

The conference can even discover whether or not present intercourse and relationships schooling adequately offers with points of misogyny, sexism and consent, or leaves college students susceptible to being “miseducated” by watching porn.

A 2020 survey by Brook, a sexual well being and wellbeing charity for younger individuals, concluded that younger individuals believed an absence of info from faculties and fogeys was leaving them at danger, and felt that greater high quality intercourse schooling would depart them feeling extra empowered.

The NEU is especially involved by the findings of a 2021 Ofsted report which discovered that 90% of women and 50% of boys had reported that both they or their friends had been despatched express footage they didn’t want to see “a lot” or “sometimes”.

The assessment was launched after hundreds of disclosures on the web site Everyone’s Invited about sexual harassment and sexual violence involving state and unbiased faculties, in addition to universities.

More than 51,000 testimonies have since been shared on the positioning, naming lots of of instructional settings throughout the UK. Disclosures made by pupils and college students spotlight the total spectrum of abusive behaviour in faculties, from lower-level harassment to critical sexual assault and rape.

At the conference, the NEU will look at proof that pornography “predominantly features young women being subjected to acts of violence such as strangulation and choking as well as racialised tropes, all of which dehumanise women”, in addition to debate the more and more sexualised nature of social media.

Teachers are additionally set to discuss whether or not incidents of sexual harassment – on and offline – must be persistently recorded by faculties in order that worrying patterns might be recognized and grownup intervention taken to defend pupils from escalating abuse.

The NEU annual conference (11 April to 14 April) will probably be attended by up to 1,600 delegates.