Young children should hear about the dangers of pornography as soon as they have access to the internet to help to counter the ready availability of explicit material.
The comment was made to journalists by National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) General Secretary Russell Hobby, at the association's annual conference in Birmingham. "The conversation should start" when children started going online, he told a BBC reporter.
However, Mr Hobby stressed this was not about showing pornography in class.
There isn't an easy answer, but as soon as children are getting access to this, it's time to begin the conversation, he said.
He added that the NAHT had been working with a number of agencies for some time to address these concerns. The body had said repeatedly that young people must be protected from pornography and children should receive appropriate guidance as part of relationship and sex education. "We would also like to see improved advice for schools to help them manage these issues most effectively. There is no place for explicit materials in the classroom or school, even in the course of teaching about their dangers, but many young people are exposed to such materials on the internet and phones." He concluded "In the face of this, young people need to know how to cope with and avoid these distorted views of relationships."
Stephen Watkins, Head Teacher of Millfield School in Leeds, said: "Children as young as three – nursery age children – access computers. If they see something that shouldn't be there, they should know to go and tell an adult." He recounted an incident in class when boy found explicit images when researching the North Pole on the internet. He also warned that parents were setting up Facebook accounts for their childrenl. Of 33 10 and 11 year-olds in his own school's top year, 24 were already on Facebook, he said. He has written to their parents to warn them they were going against the site's rules and that they were potentially exposing their children to inappropriate material. Children under 14 are not permitted to have their own accounts.
The head added that many parents were concerned about the easy access of such material on other people's portable devices and smart phones, which they could not block or monitor in the same way as computers in their own homes.
Mr Watkins favours an approach which responded to issues when they arose, in a low key manner.
