Any teacher will tell you that behaviour has always been an issue in schools.
But more recently concern has been growing over the level of inappropriate behaviour and language children are using towards each other and school staff.
Just last month the Children's Commissioner for England issued a warning over children viewing pornography online, amid evidence of youngsters copying sex acts and abusive sexual behaviour.
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And now figures showing the number of pupils suspended and excluded from Greater Manchester schools for incidents of sexual misconduct, show just how big of a problem it's become.
Exclusions for sexual misconduct tripled from just three in the academic year 2020/21, to 11 in 2021/22 - with two of those being primary age pupils from schools in Rochdale.
Suspensions increased by almost 50% over that time, from 163 to 237, with 211 of those at secondary schools, 20 in primary, and the remaining six in special schools.
It's a bleak but unsurprising picture for Michael Conroy, whose company Men at Work trains school staff on talking to pupils, mostly boys, about these issues.
He set up his community interest company three years ago when still working as a secondary school teacher, something he'd done for 16 years.
And he did so because he 'could see the direction of travel', 'the issues that we were getting with lads, the massive impact of porn and smart phones'.
He said the incidents he and colleagues were dealing with were 'different to what it had ever been like before' and 'everything got more and more serious more quickly for more kids'.
"I started noticing the young men and boys showing the impact of the porn they were consuming," he said. "The way they were talking to girls and female teachers.
"I noticed a steady and obvious increase in general levels of disrespect and sexual language."
Michael, who is originally from Bolton but now lives Midlands, helps trains teachers in Manchester, as well as social workers and youth workers.
He's been working with Manchester Women's Aid, who are delivering a programme to teenage boys in Manchester schools and is also currently training around 100 staff in Trafford.
Michael fears the figures are just the tip of the iceberg as other reasons given for exclusions could also amount to sexual misconduct.
"We don't really know what these incidents of sexual misconduct include," he said. "But then you also get exclusions or suspensions for verbal abuse towards an adult, now that could be sexualised commentary, or there's misuse of digital technology, that could be upskirting. Really the number is probably a lot higher.
"The figures don't say who has done what to who, which is a real problem, because if we can't name the problem, how can we work out a solution.
"We all know it's overwhelmingly male to female, but not knowing the full scale of the problem is pretty useless."
While schools often have no choice but to take action over individual's behaviour, Michael says that 'to see so many permanently excluded at such a young age is frankly terrifying'.
"No work will be done with those boys," he said. "They'll be at home probably looking at more porn."
And he says it's important to recognise that in many cases, 'it's not the child's fault'.
With youngsters often given unfiltered access to the internet, with little age verification to view adult material, and the likes of Andrew Tate 'deliberately targeting vulnerable kids' with his misogynistic narrative, it blurs what is and isn't appropriate into 'one swirling mess' says Michael.
"Even in primaries there are real concerns over lads bringing in phones with porn on it, trying to show others they they know about it, shouting out terminology from porn films, grim stuff like 'fisting'," he said.
"There have been incidents in secondaries of a male teacher being asked 'what's your body count?' meaning how many people have you slept with and female teachers being asked 'do you do anal?' and 'are you a milf?
"The likes of Andrew Tate are deliberately targeting that vulnerable age group at a complicated time in their life - giving them very bad information. It's not always that the child is looking for it. And there's a rise in incidents around poor mental health and kids feeling the pressure from peers, that they have to like something that they don't."
He added: "Some parents don't give a monkeys, they don't bother with filters, don't have concerns and are quite happy for the phones to do the babysitting for them.
"Others might want to do more, but don't have the tech know-how, while others just forget about it and let it slide. Or there might be older siblings around who access stuff and then leave it hanging around on screens.
"Children are often not to blame - they've been given something that's so powerful and pretty much left to their own devices."
He recalls other incidents, such as a 10-year-old pupil laughing every time a female member of staff tried to speak to him.
"He'd just laugh and say 'I'm not listening to a woman, women only good for two things, sex and cooking'," said Michael.
"And then there was the student leaving the letters 'MMAS' at the bottom of his work and his teacher found out it meant 'make me a sandwich'. It's all about trying to have the power and he didn't think she should be able to tell him what to do.
"But the question is, if he's like that at 14, what's he going to be like when he's 24 or 40?"
What he is sure on from his work with educators, social workers, youth workers and family support workers, is the need to 'keep all young people safe'.
"Everybody is saying the impact of life online and particularly porn and gaming, is a coarsening of the environment - it's harsher and coarser and generally more disrespectful," he said.
As for how to deal with it, he says there's only one way and that's through open and honest discussion.
"To get all the lads in a room for an hour and to lecture them about Andrew Tate or whatever, that's not going to work," he said. "The only way is through ongoing dialogue and giving them the chance to explore and look at the information out there.
"It's about them having clear guidelines and boundaries. And I always tell staff to look at it foremost from a safeguarding perspective. It's about pupils being safe and being safe to be around.
"It's not about being accusatory or condemnatory, that's the last thing young lads will respond to."
The Pankhurst Trust, which incorporates Manchester Women’s Aid, facilitates the Men at Work 10 Dialogues groupwork programme for young men and boys, which is funded for three years, from January 2022, by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
A spokesperson said: "Since January 2022 our sexual harm reduction trainer, Maria Colligan, has been to 15 schools across Greater Manchester and worked with 33 cohorts of teenage boys. That’s more than 330 individual session engaging more than 300 young people.
"The 10 Dialogues programme provides a safe place and protected time to explore sexist and misogynist beliefs and asks young people to consider what is safe for a teenage boy physiologically, legally, emotionally, sexually.
"The course helps boys and young men to understand that all men can play a part in delegitimising violence against women and girls and challenging harmful values. Social norms and behaviours."
Rochdale Council said its exclusion figure is three, not four, as one of the secondary exclusions was rescinded.
It pointed out that the percentage of children these figures represent, is an extremely small percentage of the 22k plus primary children and 14k plus secondary children across the borough.
A council spokesperson said: "We are not able to comment on individual cases due to the potential identification of children."
To find out more about Men at Work, or to get in touch with the company, visit the website.
Permanent exclusions due to sexual misconduct, by local authority 21/22 academic year
- Rochdale 4 (primary 2, secondary 2)
- Manchester 3 (all secondary)
- Bolton 2 (all secondary)
- Trafford 1 (secondary)
- Wigan 1 (secondary)
- Bury 0
- Oldham 0
- Salford 0
- Stockport 0
- Tameside 0
Number of suspensions due to sexual misconduct, by local authority 21/22 academic year
- Manchester 54 (primary 2, secondary 52)
- Rochdale 47 (special 1, primary 3, secondary 43)
- Bolton 33 (special 2, primary 6, secondary 25)
- Tameside 24 (special 1, primary 3, secondary 20)
- Salford 19 (primary 1, secondary 18)
- Stockport 17 (primary 2, secondary 15)
- Trafford 16 (primary 1, secondary 15)
- Wigan 11 (all secondary)
- Bury 8 (primary 1, secondary 7)
- Oldham 8 (special 2, primary 1, secondary 5)
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