The committee heard that online pornography had “completely changed the culture in the playground”, having a “very corrosive impact”, with one witness describing how boys are “cyber flashing hardcore pornographic images at girls in the corridor, and airdropping nude images to other students in class”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour this morning (5 July), the committee’s chair, Caroline Nokes, the Conservative MP for Romsey and Southampton North, said that experts had told the group that “too often young men feel that RSHE is targeted at girls, that it’s not relevant to them – they don’t feel engaged in it”.

“We know that young people at whatever age are exploring their own identity, their sexuality, they’re discovering relationships with their classmates and we want that to be done safely [and] respectfully,” she added.

Sexual harassment in schools, she noted, is impacting women’s confidence “both when they’re young and in later life”, so “it’s imperative that schools address this head-on”.

Nokes added that we are currently facing “a real cultural problem where… women are expected to accept a misogynistic lads’ culture that demands, belittles us and treats us as if we are there as sexual playthings”.

Sex education lessons need to engage boys to tackle “scourge” of sexual harassment in schools, MPs say