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Written question asked by Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat) on Thursday, 21 May 2026, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 1 June 2026. It was answered by Josh MacAlister (Labour) on Tuesday, 2 June 2026 on behalf of the Department for Education.

Pupils: Photographs

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the risks posed by the misuse of publicly available school photographs by criminals using artificial intelligence to generate child sexual abuse images; what guidance her Department has issued to schools on the publication of pupil photographs on school websites and social media platforms; and whether she plans to introduce (a) additional safeguarding measures and (b) statutory guidance to help schools mitigate the risks of AI-generated child sexual abuse material and related (i) blackmail and (ii) extortion attempts.

Answer

UK law is clear: it is an offence to produce, store, share or search for any material that contains or depicts child sexual abuse, regardless of whether the material is AI generated or not. Any suspected instances of blackmail or extortion linked to the misuse of images should be reported to the police so appropriate action can be taken.

The Online Safety Act requires platforms to prevent and swiftly remove illegal content, including child sexual abuse material, and introduces new offences targeting AI tools designed to generate such abuse.

Information is available in the 'Keeping children safe in education' (KCSIE) statutory guidance, which is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2.

This guidance sets clear expectations to protect pupils from exploitation. We are proposing strengthened cyber security content and signposting to resources such as the National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) guidance on sexual extortion in KCSIE 2026. We also provide guidance to help schools apply data protection legislation, details of which are available at:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/data-protection-in-schools/taking-and-using-photos-and-videos-and-using-cctv-in-schools.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
3915
Session
2026-27
Related items
Schools: Child Sexual Abuse Material
Friday, 19 June 2026
Written questions
House of Commons
Subjects
Photographs Schools Child sexual abuse material
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk