Far-right social media influence leading to school violence, union leader to say

Some schools in Scotland have become a “battleground of blame and violence” due to the rise of far-right movements fuelled by social media, the incoming head of a teaching union will say.

NASUWT Scotland’s David Anderson will warn that racist, misogynistic and anti-immigrant rhetoric is trickling into the country’s schools and leading to real-life violence.

Mr Anderson, a computing specialist from East Ayrshire, will say social media is helping to fuel rising incidents of harassment, threats and violence.

Speaking at NASUWT Scotland’s annual conference in Glasgow on Friday, he will tell members that education is the way forward to reduce the growing threat posed by far-right and populist movements.

A motion on tackling the far-right will be debated at the conference, which calls for pupils to be educated about the dangers of hate speech from primary school onwards in order to challenge the spread of prejudice-based abuse.

Mr Anderson will tell the conference: “Abusive rhetoric by politicians is trickling down and facilitating increasingly abusive and hateful speech in social media, which in turn seems to be spurring rapid increases in the frequency of bias-motivated incidents of harassment, threats, and violence, including rampant surges in hate crimes.

“Schools and classrooms in some cases have become a battleground of blame and violence.”

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of teachers in Scotland who responded to the union’s recent behaviour in schools survey feel social media negatively impacts pupil behaviour.

Some 5% of female teachers who responded reported experiencing sexual abuse from pupils, compared to 2% of male teachers.

Female respondents reported sexism and misogyny as among the types of abuse they receive from pupils.

At the conference, Mr Anderson will also call for vigilance and a united front to continue to challenge “prejudice and hatred” that he says is a threat to equality.

He will say: “Education is often perceived as a threat by the extreme right.

“Internationally, we see the closure of departments of education and the removal of programmes to promote equality within society.

“In the USA it’s called DEI, diversity equality inclusion – that’s in the NASUWT DNA. We must protect and call out any attempt to water down or attack these principles.

“Education remains the best tool we have to counter racist narratives, to address prejudice against refugees and to tackle intolerance in our communities.”