Kids are taught about the dangers of knife crime – so why not Andrew Tate, too?

As the government unveils its flagship strategy to tackle violence against women and girls, Victoria Richards welcomes misogyny being put front and centre of her daughter’s school curriculum – but worries there are far too few parents teaching their children to do the right thing…

Education starts within the home – and if that’s not happening well enough, then the next best place is within our school system, says Victoria Richards

It’s been 18 months since Labour’s manifesto pledge to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) within a decade – and now these grand and vital plans are finally coming to fruition, with the unveiling of a flagship strategy of “anti-Andrew Tate” lessons in British schools..

It comes with a hefty public-money price tag of £36m, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth it.

We already know that, according to the National Police Chiefs' Council, violence against women and girls makes up just under a fifth of all recorded crime in England and Wales. We know that, in the year to March, around 12.8 per cent of women experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking – approximately one in eight of us.

And we also know that it starts young: a recent Girlguiding survey showed 77 per cent of girls and young women aged between seven and 21 have experienced online harm in the last year; while half of all girls and young women are calling for online platforms to remove harmful content to help them feel safer. More than one in five primary school-aged girls say they have “seen rude images” on the internet. Even more shockingly, this has doubled since 2021.

But, hopefully, all that is about to change. According to Jess Phillips, the government’s safeguarding minister, the new plans will focus on three main things: prevention (by challenging misogyny and promoting more healthy relationships); stopping abusers (giving the police more powers to track them down); and giving victims greater support.

Much of the work will happen in the classroom, with kids as young as 11 being given compulsory courses on consent and lessons about the toxic influence of people like self-confessed “misogynist”, Andrew Tate. Seeing as more than 40 per cent of young men claim to have favourable views of Tate – who has said publicly he believes women should "bear responsibility" for rape and sexual assault, that they belong in the home, can’t drive and are a man's property – it’s a miracle we’ve survived so long without it.

There will also be a drive towards increasing frank conversations around violent pornography, with proposals for a ban on strangulation in porn (hear, hear), and secondary school teachers will be given specialist training to talk to boys and girls about being in “healthy relationships”. Kids who show signs of harmful behaviour will be signed up to special programmes to teach them about coercion, peer pressure and stalking.

Intriguingly, the government is also proposing to set up a “self help”-style phoneline, both for victims who fear they might be in unhealthy or toxic relationships, and those who want to self-report if they’re worried about their behaviours towards women. "I would be failing, we would be failing, if we didn't try to prevent people who were already perpetrating – and stopping people becoming perpetrators in the first place," Phillips has said.

The government is to tackle misogynistic, toxic influencers like Andrew Tate (right, with his brother Tristan) head-on with compulsory lessons on healthy relationships for all secondary school pupils (AFP via Getty Images)

Call me a cynic, for while I applaud all of the interventions and believe they’re more than necessary – and schools tackle the thorny issue of knife crime, so why not misogyny? – I’m not sure this last one will work. I’ve witnessed first-hand the reluctance of young men to talk to anyone at all about their feelings: one teenager said he was frightened of all the “fuss”. Many of the boys my daughter’s age say that going to a therapist would be “embarrassing”.

But that’s exactly why we need to normalise these kinds of conversations in the classroom – for the kids who are too scared or too ashamed to admit to anyone that their “typical teenage” behaviour has turned toxic. If schools don’t do it, then who will?

We’ve all seen Adolescence, and we know that something simply isn’t working at home – too many parents are in denial, or simply unaware, of what their children get up to on screens in their bedrooms. Plus, what is said in the classroom will surely have a trickle-down effect online, where the bulk of the radicalisation of young men happens – the most important work is in teaching our kids the attitudinal red flags to look out for in the first place.

Soberingly, the Department for Education (DfE) reports that misogynistic attitudes have now reached “epidemic scale” among young people, with 54 per cent of those aged 11 to 19 saying they have experienced or witnessed sexist comments. My daughter is one of them.

She’s had arguments with boys at school who “joke” about equality, and query the need for abortion or feminism at all. One male teacher a couple of years ago told her and the rest of year 7 that abortion meant “killing children” – in a science lesson. Putting misogyny front and centre of the curriculum is clearly sorely needed, and not just for the students.

Just last year, Ofsted reported a “scourge” of sexism in the classroom – it was that report that precipitated Labour’s pledge to halve VAWG altogether. The Home Office has also announced a ban on "nudification" tools, to stop AI “deepfakes”.

Phillips isn’t wrong that misogyny should be treated as seriously as any other extremist ideology, either. In fact, the two are insidiously interlinked. In January this year, a leaked Home Office report commissioned by Yvette Cooper after the Southport riots revealed that the “manosphere” online had been identified as a breeding ground for extremism, finding it contains a “significant amount of content directly focused on misogyny, and sometimes absorbs extremist right-wing tropes”.

We can’t do this alone. There are far too few of us committed to teaching our kids to do the right thing, or brave enough to mention it at all. Education starts within the home – and if that’s not happening well enough, then the next best place is within our school system.