'Female teachers are being targeted': Boys aged 11 to be sent on anti-misogyny courses in new crackdown

The Safeguarding Minister told Nick Ferrari at Breakfast that children as young as 11 could be referred to anti-misogyny courses if they display problem behaviour.

Such behaviour includes acts like sharing intimate images, the MP for Birmingham Yardley confirmed.

Teachers will also be given specialist training to talk to pupils about issues such as consent and children who show harm towards parents, siblings or in relationships will be signed up to behaviour change programmes.

A new helpline will also be set up for teenagers to get help over concerns for their own behaviour in relationships.

Read more: Misogyny lessons for young boys in push to stamp out violence against women and girls

Ms Phillips told Ferrari: "I go into schools and most constituency MPs across the country will be going into schools and actually the teaching unions came out, I think around nine months to say that the growing levels of misogyny that they were seeing, both targeted at girls in their schools, but also at teachers, female teachers.

"Look, I'm not going to teach teachers how to suck eggs. They know what and they're already telling us what they can see."

She likened the early intervention to how governments similarly tackle terrorism or knife crime.

"If there was any concerns around things like knife crime, them growing up in Birmingham or if they were showing extremist views.

"The government provides schemes for teachers, whether that's the prevent programme, whether that's things to do with reducing knife crime incidents.

"There were schemes for those people to be sent on and they haven't existed for this particular crime site."

Sir Keir said: "Every parent should be able to trust that their daughter is safe at school, online and in her relationships.

"But too often toxic ideas are taking hold early and going unchallenged.

"This Government is stepping in sooner - backing teachers, calling out misogyny, and intervening when warning signs appear - to stop harm before it starts.

"This is about protecting girls and driving forward education and conversation with boys and young men, which is a responsibility we owe to the next generation, and one this Government will deliver."

Measures already announced as part of the cross-government strategy have also included introducing specialist rape and sexual offences investigators to every police force, better support for survivors in the NHS and a £19 million funding boost for councils to provide safe housing for domestic abuse survivors.

The latest measures for educating children is backed by a £20 million package, with £16 million invested by the Government, which is working with philanthropists on an innovation fund.

Responding to the announcements made for the strategy so far, domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, Dame Nicole Jacobs, said the commitments "do not go far enough" to see the number of people experiencing abuse start to fall.

She added: "Today's strategy rightly recognises the scale of this challenge and the need to address the misogynistic attitudes that underpin it, but the level of investment to achieve this falls seriously short."

Dame Nicole also said overburdened schools are not being equipped with the infrastructure they need to safeguard child victims of domestic abuse.

Schools to take part in the teacher training pilot will be chosen next year, while ministers aim for all secondary schools to teach healthy relationship sessions by the end of this Parliament.

It comes as Department for Education-commissioned research found 70% of secondary school teachers surveyed said their school had actively dealt with sexual violence and/or harassment between children.

The safeguarding minister added she is "sick" of putting "nicer plasters onto ever growing scars".

"So I suppose the first thing I need to say is that one in eight women were victims of violence against women and girls last year and so I'm a bit sick, I have to say, as somebody who's campaigned on this for many years of just trying to put nicer plasters onto ever growing scars, and so we've got to - the Government is really, really focused on the prevention," she told Times Radio.

"And one of the things that we are here to announce today is, working across the Home Office and the Department for Education, is what will we be doing in schools to both prevent it, whether that's healthy relationship educations, but also targeted interventions for young men where teachers spot behaviours, such as the sharing of intimate images, so that we can stop that behaviour progressing into something that may end up even more sinister in the future."

She added: "So we have to build new models of how to do this because there isn't just a thing I can grab off the shelf from another country.

"We will be the first place to try and do this, and so we will find evidence-based interventions that work and we will offer those as resources to schools."