Am I being naive to be shocked about porn in Y7?

[MerryMarigold]

My son is in Y7 and told me about a child who is showing pictures in school in his phone. I was very shocked. I am not that happy they are allowed phones in school (they are not allowed to be visible inside the building and get confiscated if they make a noise in class), but apparently this child gets his out during lessons and shows pictures when the teacher is concentrating on something else, or in the changing rooms during P.E. Probably also at break.

Is this a safeguarding issue or something to be expected from that year? He said the pics involve men and women so it won't be a nice underwear shot. My son says he is disgusted and I can believe it because he is still in the 'hating girls' phase. Poor kid has gone from being grossed out about sex ed in Y6 to this!

How do your schools deal with this?

Yes, that's a safeguarding issue. Report to the school. Be specific- this child had these images on their phone. They showed them to your dc on this day in this lesson. School should investigate.

Sadly, there is a huge amount of sexually explicit material floating around schools.

Yes its safeguarding issue. You need to speak with the Safeguarding lead at the school and explain exactly what happened. They will want to speak to your son about it too.

Our school had this problem. For the last few years it got progressively worse and ended up with frequent police intervention for several students due to body shaming and sharing inappropriate and illegal pictures via snapchat and instagram.

Since September mobile phones have been banned at school. The students do get them taken off them if they get them out during the school day. If a phone goes off during the school day the student gets put in isolation and their phone removed and a parent has to collect it at the end of the day. They have implemented a zero tolerance policy.

Lots of parents went mad at the school because of it, they didn't want their child to be at school with no way of them contacting them during the day Instances like the one you posted have gone down to almost zero since the ban. The school took a lot of flack though, I was very surprised at the parents reactions and it most certainly wasn't 'against their human rights' as many parents tried to claim.

Thanks. I have spoken to school. Form tutor is speaking to HOY. Poor ds. He is very shy and won't want to be spoken to about it, particularly as he told me in confidence. It's hard to know how explicit, but I am assuming man/ woman pics won't just be arty shots.

Well done your son for telling you. It presumably meant he was not comfortable. Hopefully the school's response will help reassure him that this was a reasonable reaction.

Yes he was definitely uncomfortable, but he doesn't want to get a friend into trouble. They're not close, but still...