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Social media operators must be “brought to heel” for the misery and disruption they are causing to the lives of students, teachers and parents, according to a senior school leader.
Manny Botwe, the president of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), will tell the association’s annual conference that teachers are reporting increased bullying, abuse and the malicious use of “deepfakes” against pupils and staff through social media.
“This chaos must end. For too long, tech billionaires have been given immense power without accountability. They hide behind the defence that they are champions of free speech while profiting from platforms that allow harm to fester,” Botwe, the headteacher of a state secondary school in Macclesfield, is expected to say on Friday.
“But enough is enough. It is time to bring these platforms to heel and force them to police their own spaces.
“As a society, we have the right to demand the protection of our children, the enforcement of decency and the upholding of standards. That right must be asserted.”
A survey commissioned by the ASCL found that online bullying between students through social media was reported by nearly three-quarters of secondary school teachers and half of primary school teachers.
Despite popular social media platforms in the UK requiring a minimum age of 13 to sign up, more than 70% of primary teachers said they were aware of younger pupils using the platforms. Most state primary schools teach children up to the age of 11.
One in 10 secondary teachers said they knew of artificial intelligence-generated deepfake images or audio being used maliciously against students or staff, while a similar number said there were “signs of students accessing extremist content” through social media.
One in four of the teachers and school leaders surveyed said they were aware of pupils using social media to view pornography or violent content, including 18% of primary teachers.
Botwe said: “It leaves a trail of harm: safeguarding concerns, fractured friendships, bullying, anxiety and the spread of extremist ideologies. And, increasingly, it is being weaponised against schools and teachers, with disgruntled parents using it as a platform to target staff.”
Botwe said he welcomed the protections offered by the new Online Safety Act, but that it was too soon to know if the act would prove to be effective.
Botwe also uses his presidential speech to criticise the government’s failure to adequately fund free breakfast clubs in England’s primary schools.
“A daily funding rate of 60p per child is absurd. You can’t promise parents a nutritious meal and 30 minutes of childcare, then expect schools to deliver it for less than half the price of a Greggs sausage roll,” Botwe said.
“Meanwhile, the immense resource challenges we faced under the previous government have not disappeared. Funding shortages, staff recruitment and retention struggles, and an overstretched education system – these issues persist, and tackling them must be a shared priority.”
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is also to address the ASCL conference in Liverpool.
She will call for “old-fashioned graft” to overcome the gaps in learning among children who are persistently absent from school.
Phillipson will highlight findings that children in year 11 who miss 10 days of school are only half as likely to get good GCSE grades in English and maths, adding: “I won’t accept the damage that does to those children. I expect schools to catch up – fast. And I know that’s what schools want too, what you are all working so hard to do.
“The way we turn this around is through collaboration, partnership and, if we’re honest, old-fashioned graft.”
More than one in 10 children at state schools in England are absent for the equivalent of a day each fortnight.
