For These Reasons, Sexual Assault Incidents Are Increasing Among Teenage Students in Britain

Amanda Spielman, Chief Inspector of the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted), recently called on the British government to impose restrictions on the content of many of the topics students learn in sex education in schools, according to a British newspaper.

On the other hand, a survey conducted by the charity Dignity revealed that one in 10 teenagers say they are addicted to pornography.

Teachers indicated that they are examining the psychological damage caused by pornography to school students amid warnings of sexual behavior disorder among teenage students in Britain.

A school principal who works with Dignity said the education sector has seen an increase in pupils’ complaints of sexual assault in recent years.

 

Sex Education

The chairwoman of schools' regulator Ofsted has warned that British children are being taught sex education lessons that have no basis in any reputable scientific biological explanation, The Telegraph reported on March 9, 2023.

Pupils in some secondary schools are told there are 100 sexes, while children are taught gender flexibility as a fact in some major academies and independent schools, according to an investigation by The Telegraph.

Mrs. Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, told the newspaper she had warned the government that current Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) guidelines do not set limits on what can be taught.

She warned that Ofsted was currently unable to sanction schools for teaching inappropriate material.

Her intervention comes after The Telegraph revealed widespread evidence of age-inappropriate sex education material in schools.

The dossier of evidence compiled by Conservative MP Miriam Cates was presented to Rishi Sunak two weeks ago, leading the PM to request a review of the DfE guidance on RSE.

Controversial educational resources include children under the age of 12 asking how they feel about oral and anal sex, and elementary school teaching resources about masturbation.

Last month, the Isle of Man Government suspended all sex education lessons on the island and launched an independent inquiry after parents reported that a drag queen had told 11-year-olds there are 73 genders. Others in the same year group were taught about oral and anal sex and sex-change operations.

Nearly 50 Conservative MPs, including Priti Patel, the former Home Secretary, and Simon Clarke, the former Minister for Settlements, have called on the PM to act with equal urgency and decisiveness to protect children and childhood across the U.K.

Sunak promised to end inappropriate sex education during his leadership election campaign last year. However, no action has yet been taken, and Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, has not prioritized the issue.

Parents say that schools will not allow them to see teaching materials, citing copyright concerns from third-party providers.

In turn, Mrs. Spielman said that parents should be able to see the material being taught in RSE lessons.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, said schools must ensure they make content available to parents if asked. However, campaign groups and MPs say the onus should fall on schools to make the material publicly available to parents.

Mrs. Spielman reiterated her concerns that some sex education materials could be in breach of schools’ statutory duty to maintain political neutrality.

She also said that sex education has become so complex and controversial that teachers need absolute clarity about what schools can do and when.

PM Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons on March 8 that he had asked the Ministry of Education to ensure that schools do not teach inappropriate or disputed content in RSE.

“Our priority must always be the safety and well-being of children, and schools must also make curriculum content and materials available to parents,” he added.

MP Cates has warned that teaching radical gender ideology in schools could contribute to an increase in the number of children seeking medical intervention to change their sex.

 

Sexual Content

In a related context, The Guardian newspaper published a report on March 10, 2023, about a new survey that found that one-fifth of teenage students in Britain, between the ages of 14 and 18, watch pornography on a regular basis, with some of them suffering from addiction to pornographic content.

The principal of one of the schools covered by the survey said that the violent sexual content greatly affected her students and indicated that the school takes a special approach to combat the significant increase in sexual assault incidents.

The report was carried out by Dignity, which specializes in combating sexual abuse incidents, surveying 4,000 children aged between 14 and 18 in Hertfordshire Foundation.

22% of the children in the survey watched pornography multiple times; one in five students said that watching pornography had become a regular habit, while one in ten students said they had become addicted to watching pornography.

One in ten children said they had watched pornography by the age of nine.

One of the participants in the survey indicated that he was exposed to pornography for the first time in his life at the age of only three, while the average age at which children start watching pornography is 12 years.

Teaching unions said schools across Britain were struggling to live up to their responsibility to educate children about the harm caused by online pornography.

“The PM’s report, which directed a review of the sex education curricula in schools, carried political motives,” teaching unions noted.

“There was no evidence to support the claims of Conservative MPs who alleged that children were watching age-appropriate pornography in classrooms,” teaching unions said.

A school principal who works with Dignity told The Guardian: “Viewing pornography has contributed to an increase in sexual violence among adolescent school children.”

“The number of students who complained of sexual assault incidents has increased over the last seven or eight years, and at first we did not know the reason, but we began to feel that sexual violence was linked to watching pornography,” he added.

“There is a significant association between sexual violence and viewing pornography because adolescents often watch violent sexual content,” the director said.

The British government has directed schools to address incidents of sexual harassment after a report from the U.K. Education Standards Commission (Ofsted) found that schoolchildren routinely face harassment.

The report was issued after complaints were received from thousands of students in schools about sexual abuse in schools.

“It is impossible to tackle sexual assault and harassment in schools without looking at the impact of pornography on children and young people,” said Helen Roberts, CEO of Dignity.

“Many students have reported to us that they are addicted to watching pornography,” she added.

The Children’s Commission in Britain issued a report last month talking about the impact of violent pornography on the behavior of children who started watching this material at an early age.

The report stated that a third of children started watching pornography at the age of ten, highlighting the relationship between exposure to pornography and the increase in sexual violence.

 

Online Safety Bill

Although it passed the second reading in the House of Lords in Britain, the Online Safety Bill has not yet been decided, as there are still demands to tighten some of its clauses and facilitate others, but without guarantees that Parliament or the government will accept any amendments to the formula that was approved in January 2023, after it changed several times since the second half of 2022.

The aforementioned bill is among several legislations and revisions that have been postponed since last year due to the ruling party’s crisis.

From Boris Johnson, through the few days of Lease Gear, to Rishi Sunak, Conservative governments acquiesced in the amendments proposed by party MPs, until the legislation became a burden on the makers and publishers of electronic content.

Among the most prominent articles of the new law is a two-year prison sentence for the owners of websites and social media platforms if they fail to prevent the publication of any content that harms children.

According to the British government, the Online Safety Bill will include measures to control the viewing of pornographic materials, and the law will require pornographic sites to ask viewers about their age before viewing the content. The decision will also include banning pornography on some social networking sites and some search engines.

On the other hand, activists believe that the new bill will not be sufficient to address violent content promoted by sexual materials, and activists are calling on porn sites to take action and implement strict rules to prevent the circulation of sexual content through social media.

Last year, some angry parents protested against the content of sex education at the primary level in British schools, which teach children sexual content early and extensively before they reach the fifth grade, which means that the age of children ranges between the ages of nine and ten only.

The Education Law, which was updated in 2019, had already approved the compulsory teaching of sex education in primary schools and in the seventh grade in some secondary schools, which started in September of the same year.

It had previously been postponed under the pressure of campaigns by some civil society organizations and petitions submitted by activists to the government and parliament.

Recently, officials and specialists sounded alarm bells about the disorders and problems that this substance may cause in children because its content is not appropriate for their age, pointing out that the compulsory teaching of sex education is tantamount to imposing an extremist ideology on children in Britain.

The parents of Muslim students have also expressed their discontent with British schools that promote ideas of homosexuality among Muslim children and perpetuate their reconciliation with abnormal sexual orientations, in a clear challenge to Muslims who do not accept those ideas that conflict with the teachings of their religion, which are taboos.