I'm A Mum Of Teens – I Can't Afford To Not Question Schools Before Agreeing To Photos Going Online

"The consent form most parents sign at the start of each school year was written for a different world."

Imagine a photograph of your child taken on sports day. They’re laughing, probably slightly out of breath, wearing their school kit.

It’s the kind of image that ends up in the school newsletter, on the website, shared with pride by staff who want to show what school life looks like.

Now imagine that same photograph being found by a criminal who lifts the face of the child in seconds and, using freely available AI tools, turns it into something so harmful I am not going to describe it in detail here.

That image is then sent to the school with a demand: pay up, or it goes online.

This is not a hypothetical. The scale of child abuse imagery has grown from fewer than 10,000 images 25 years ago, to tens of millions today.

This has happened to schools in the UK, and most schools have no idea it is possible.

I know that’s uncomfortable to read. Though, as the mother of two teenage daughters, I strongly believe that all parents deserve to know the internet where their children’s photographs are being uploaded is not the same internet that schools developed their safeguarding policies for.

I didn’t come to this issue as a parent whose child was affected. I came to it as someone who has run branding agencies for the last two decades, sitting in a meeting with a........

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