Contribution
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Before coming to this place, I used to tutor for the Brilliant Club in several schools in the north-east and would often have conversations with my students. One course that I taught was about the prevention of genocide, and it touched on issues of identity-based violence and discrimination. Very often, the girls would enter a conversation about the sorts of misogynist comments that they received, and their experiences of sexual assault by boys in their class who were influenced by so-called online influencers—to name and shame one, Andrew Tate seems to be having a really pernicious influence on many boys, and seems to promote a version of masculinity that I believe is deeply harmful, both to boys and to the girls whom they then interact with. That was an excellent intervention.
The crisis in men’s mental health and wellbeing has its roots in the crisis in boys’ mental health and wellbeing. In 2020, 122 boys aged 10 to 19 died by suicide. An analysis by Childline found that, despite having more than double the suicide rate, only one boy for every five girls talks about mental health to Childline, and they are even less likely to contact the service when they have suicidal thoughts. Boys as well as men appear to be suffering in silence.
Health and wellbeing are intrinsically linked to the ability to learn. Nationally, girls are outperforming boys at every level of education from primary school through to university. In the north-east, we have the lowest GCSE grades anywhere in the country, particularly among boys. Of course, it did not used to be this way. Back in the ’70s, it was the other way round, and there was alarm at the fact that boys were outperforming girls. Significant studies done at that time explored things such as language and space in the classroom and the way that boys would dominate conversation. When I visit schools today, I see the reverse: boys who are suppressed and do not feel able to speak freely. There is much evidence that that is not a uniform picture, and there are examples of schools where boys are not underperforming, so we know it is avoidable and preventable.
To pick up the point we heard a moment ago, research shows that boys need to have positive role models. That does not just mean fathers and male teachers, although that is important; it could mean older boys in the school being given responsibility to act as peer mentors to younger boys. There is evidence of unconscious bias in teaching staff, which we need to get rid of. We need to raise expectations, because the schools that do well establish a culture of high expectations among boys.
We need to take seriously who and what is influencing boys. When I was growing up in the ’90s, it was more or less taken for granted that we were in an age of progress, where our generation of young men were growing up with more respect for women and with more progressive values. Again, to reference the growing move to the far right and the misogynistic values being spread online, that progress is now in reverse. We need to guard against those behaviours by boys online.
Another significant intervention that I will promote in other parts of my work in Parliament is a much earlier focus on social emotional learning in schools. We need children to grow up learning to recognise, understand and regulate their emotions and to find better or appropriate ways to express them. They need to learn greater self-awareness, social awareness and empathy for others. People are not born with these skills; these are skills they develop and from an early age based on the sorts of role models and interaction that children experience at home and in the classroom. The Welsh Government and the Mayor of Manchester are good examples of those actively rolling out programmes in schools that focus on children’s social emotional learning.
I will leave my remarks there because I have talked for long enough, and I am conscious of leaving time for colleagues to make their important contributions to the debate and add to the points I have raised. I thank everyone for convening to discuss the issues. I hope that as a House we can take these issues seriously and it will not just be a debate but something that leads to meaningful change.