Some teachers are “self-censoring” to avoid offending religious pupils, according to a poll.

A YouGov survey of more than 1,000 teachers conducted for the Policy Exchange think tank found 16% of them admitted to having self-censored in order to avoid causing religious offence.

The centre-right think tank claims this has created a “de facto blasphemy code in schools across the country”.

It says the Batley Grammar School incident, where a teacher was forced into hiding and received death threats after showing a class a picture of the prophet Muhammad, has “clearly scared the teaching profession”.

Some 55% of teachers polled said they would never use an image of the Islamic prophet in class and a further 9% cited the Batley incident as the reason they would not do so.

Half of teachers said there would be a risk to their safety if protests similar to the ones which sprang up outside the school gates in Batley occurred, with one in five saying there would be a “very big risk”.

The region with the highest percentage of teachers suggesting there would be a “very big risk” was Yorkshire and the Humber, where the Batley incident took place, at 33%.

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