A pupil approaches you in floods of tears. She tells you that there’s a sexual image of her circulating among the boys in the class, and she’s seriously considering leaving school and never coming back.
The image is fake. Her classmates don’t care; they’re circulating it anyway.
Someone has used a nudification app without her consent to alter a real, innocent picture of her so it’s now indecent. But she’s standing in front of you now, frightened that the adults who are supposed to protect her will somehow decide that she’s to blame.
What happens over the next few minutes really matters.
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Do you or your staff know how to respond? Do they understand that they can’t view the image, but they don’t need to in order to take her seriously? Would the pupil leave that conversation knowing someone was on her side and would help?
The Department for Education (DfE) recently revised the Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) guidance, coming into effect on 1st September 2026. This revision brings issues, including misogyny, incel culture, and AI deepfakes, into focus. For schools, this presents a new challenge: ensuring that learning goes beyond the classroom so pupils can get the support they need if they encounter these issues.
The new DfE tells schools that they must take RSHE guidance into account when planning and delivering their teaching.
For secondary schools, that includes discussing topics they may encounter. Incel culture, online influencers, deepfakes and AI-generated sexual imagery. Teaching about consent also means exploring how pressure and power affect relationships, and what it looks like to treat someone with kindness and care.
In primary schools, children start with age-appropriate learning about respect, personal boundaries and asking for help.
So, what difference will these lessons make in school?
It could help a pupil recognise that something happening in their current or future relationship isn’t ok, and find the words to tell someone. It could help a teacher or TA pick up on a worrying comment they overheard and, instead of dismissing it or feeling unsure how to handle it, they could respond appropriately.
For that to actually work, staff need to know what to do with a concern, and pupils need to trust that they’ll be taken seriously. That takes time, training and the opportunities to talk through difficult situations.
Your school policies will likely need updating. But that’s only one step. Making a policy work in a corridor or classroom takes real training. And when you update your policies and train your staff, it’s worth asking: if a pupil approaches a member of staff with an RSHE-related issue, will they know how to help?
Imagine that you overhear a pupil making a degrading comment about girls during a lesson. Someone, rightly, objects. If you respond, “Ignore him, he’s only trying to get a reaction,” then what has everyone in that room just learned?
The pupil targeted has probably learned that speaking up changes nothing. Others in the class can be forgiven for concluding that this misogynistic behaviour is tolerated, provided it can be passed off as a ‘joke’.
Schools can use incidents like this to examine whether their everyday responses reinforce their teaching. If pupils hear about respect during RSHE lessons but then see it undermined, with humiliation, sexism and misogynistic behaviour dismissed elsewhere, they’re stuck, confused, trying to work out which message the school is really sending.
The new DfE guidance makes clear that what pupils learn in RSHE should carry through into how the school handles safeguarding and behaviour. Staff should be clear about why a misogynistic comment is harmful. They should focus on offering alternative views to create an open dialogue that helps everyone to learn.
That means explaining why a comment or action is unacceptable, listening to the pupil and helping them think it through. Young people need clear boundaries, but they also need the chance and support to change.
Teachers across the UK are reporting more misogyny from pupils. Technology is giving people more ways to act on it, including turning someone’s everyday photograph into a sexual image without their consent.
In the teachers' union NASUWT’s annual surveys, the proportion of female teachers reporting it rose from 17.4% in 2023 to 23.4% in 2026. That’s almost one in four female teachers reporting misogyny directed at them by pupils, rather than all misogyny in schools. These findings suggest a worsening problem, while research suggests how online content may be a contributing factor.
A UCL-led study found that test accounts exploring loneliness and self-improvement were increasingly showing videos expressing anger and blame towards women. This is content on social media, driven by algorithms which amplify misogynistic posts, helping to normalise harmful ideologies for young people.
Interviews with school leaders also described these same ideas appearing in pupils’ everyday conversations. It’s a whole other field of research to explain why these algorithms behave like this, and who’s behind it. But we must remember: social media didn’t invent misogyny, although its recommendations can and do give harmful ideas repeated exposure to make them seem ‘normal’.
In our Incel Subculture course, a student, Bruno, finds an online community that seems to understand his loneliness and rejection. He feels heard, for once. Gradually, that sense of belonging draws him towards resentment, and the unfounded belief that women ‘owe’ men attention and intimacy.
While it’s a fictional scenario, this is an increasingly common one in the real world. The course asks staff to look beyond the unfamiliar terminology incel culture is wrapped in and consider what is happening to the child.
What makes the incel community appealing? What beliefs is he repeating? Is someone being targeted? Is he expressing hopelessness, threatening harm or becoming increasingly fixated on rejection?
The risk to the young person themselves matters, too. Some incel communities encourage hopelessness, self-harm and suicidal thinking. Pupils who feel part of these spaces tend not to trust mental health support, even when they need it to cope safely with the distress they may be feeling. Staff need to recognise that a pupil may be at risk of harming themselves, as well as others, and follow safeguarding procedures.
The course is very useful and informative, but let's be clear: Staff don’t need to become experts in incel ideology. They do need to recognise concerning behaviour or content, understand the safeguarding implications, and know how to apply their school’s procedures.
A word, a meme or an emoji on its own doesn’t establish what a pupil believes. Turning a glossary of incel terms into a checklist for identifying “incels” risks missing the context.
The course's useful focus is the behaviour, its impact, and the support needed. Staff can record and report concerns without deciding for themselves whether a pupil belongs to an online subculture.
There’s also room for compassion alongside accountability. A pupil expressing harmful views may need support themselves. That’s not to say behaviour should be excused. And it doesn't reduce the school's responsibility to anyone affected.
In our AI Deepfakes in Schools course, Inaya’s classmates circulate a fabricated sexual image of her. She becomes frightened to attend school and worries that adults will blame her.
The image shows something that never happened. But the humiliation and disruption to her life are very real.
That distinction matters. The argument that “It isn’t really you” offers no comfort when classmates treat it as if it were, sharing it, commenting on it, and using it for entertainment.
It also raises a question about how we discuss online safety. Advice about what children should share can’t address a situation in which someone has manipulated an ordinary photograph. The responsibility for that abuse, and it is abuse, lies with those creating and circulating it.
For teachers and other frontline staff, the priority is to respond appropriately and follow safeguarding procedures. Some staff may be confused about what could happen to them personally if they see the image themselves. Should they look at the image to confirm the truth?
The government’s UKCIS advice is this: NEVER view, copy, print, share, store, or save the imagery yourself, or ask a child to share or download it. This is illegal. If you have already viewed the imagery by accident (for example, if someone has shown it to you before you could ask them not to), this must be reported to your Designated Safeguarding Lead.
Exceptional decisions about viewing imagery sit with the DSL under this guidance.
A calm response can begin with reassurance: “You’ve done the right thing by telling me; this isn’t your fault.” Explain that the concern must be shared with the appropriate safeguarding staff so they can help.
Consent connects these subjects. Assuming someone ‘owes’ another intimacy, or that an available photograph is theirs to manipulate, creates an opportunity to discuss entitlement and boundaries.
A pupil might be able to define ‘consent’ in a lesson but still feel unsure what to do when someone keeps pushing after they’ve said no. Talking through realistic situations may be uncomfortable, but it helps pupils recognise pressure, respect other people’s boundaries and know when to ask for help.
Depending on pupils’ age and stage, useful discussion questions might include:
The aim is to help pupils consider other people's dignity and the consequences of their own actions. These conversations also give staff the opportunity to hear misunderstandings that might otherwise go unspoken.
A lesson about consent or harmful relationships might be the first moment that a pupil recognises that something happening to them isn’t okay. It also might be the first time they feel able to tell someone.
The revised RSHE guidance recognises this and says staff should be trained to respond to safeguarding concerns and offer support.
The person they choose to tell could be the teacher who has just taught them about RSHE. it could be a teaching assistant, or another adult they trust. Whoever it is needs to know how to listen, what to say, and how to pass the concern on.
For school leaders, a useful starting point is to provide staff with training courses and walk through realistic examples. If a pupil shared a concern tomorrow, would they know what to do next and who to turn to for help?
A named safeguarding lead and a reporting procedure give a school structure. But are pupils willing to use it? This requires some real attention.
Consider asking pupils, through appropriate and safe feedback, questions like:
These questions are best avoided in public discussions as answers may be influenced by others. The purpose is to understand barriers and make routes to support clear for individuals.
Governors should ask leaders how they know pupils understand those routes. Staff can help by explaining what will happen after a pupil asks for help, including who may need to be told and why. Leaders can then use pupils' feedback to find out what still feels confusing or worrying.
Fewer reports don’t necessarily mean there are fewer problems, though. Some pupils may feel safe and supported. Others might just be keeping quiet because they’re still afraid of what will happen if they are caught speaking up.
Start by reading the RSHE guidance. If you have a designated person responsible for implementing this guidance, meet with them, the DSL, and any senior leadership.
We recommend choosing a realistic scenario to test your arrangements, then agree who’ll address any gaps.
Focus on five practical steps:
For governors, these steps provide useful questions to ask. For leaders and DSLs, they can help show where support is needed. For teachers and support staff, they set clear expectations
iAM Academy has already done much of the hard work for you. Our courses, Incel Subculture and AI Deepfakes in School, are written by experts and use scenarios to explore concerning behaviour, its impact in schools, and how staff can respond. But they aren’t the only courses that can help.
Our Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) and Safeguarding in Schools collections contain more than 50 courses for people working in schools. They include hard-hitting, sensitively written courses such as Disclosure, Recognising the Signs of Abuse, Online Safety, Child Sexual Abuse, FGM, Patterns of Grooming, Prevent and Neglect.
Use them to support staff development and start informed conversations about your school’s approach.
The next pupil who asks for help may have spent a long time plucking up the courage to do so. Give your staff the knowledge to respond with care and a clear understanding of what to do next.
Visit our KCSIE collections page to find out more about this topic and start your training with iAM Academy today.