Children as young as four are being removed from school for sexual misconduct, figures have revealed.
They are among almost 15,000 youngsters who have been expelled or suspended for sex offences – including assaults on teachers – in the past five years.
More than 1,100 were primary school children, some in reception classes.
Indecent
Boys aged just four have been kicked out of schools in Dorset, Yorkshire, Wiltshire and the West Midlands.
Incidents in County Durham included indecent exposure and possessing sexual material. In Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, a boy of ten was suspended for inappropriately touching four pupils.
Offences catalogued from all the figures included sexual abuse, assault, harassment, and lewd behaviour.
Menace
The statistics were revealed in a Freedom of Information request made by The Sun answered by 148 of the 174 local education authorities in England and Wales.
Miranda Suit, of child protection charity SaferMedia, claims that this is a result of the “pervasive menace” of internet porn.
She said: “These actions, such as inappropriate touching, are fast becoming ‘normal’ for children exposed to explicit content online.”
Act
Last month a parliamentary report highlighted figures showing almost one in three children aged ten or under have seen sexual images online.
Claire Perry MP, who was behind the report, said: “The time for hand-wringing is past and the time for commonsense solutions is here. We have got to act.”
Following the report a survey showed 66 per cent of the public were in favour of a system where users had to ‘opt-in’ to view adult content at home.