Online Safety Taskforce Action Plan 2026/27

Equipping parents, carers and practitioners

Equipping parents, carers and practitioners to ensure they can protect the children and young people they care for from online harms and support their wellbeing.

The Scottish Government is taking action to provide parents and carers with resources to help them understand the risks of online harm and where to go for support. We are also ensuring practitioners are equipped with the knowledge and skills to support children and young people to build resilience and develop safe, respectful and responsible online behaviours. It is important that they can identify risks, know how to respond to them, and know where to seek support when harmed. In 2026-27 we will strengthen resources for parents, carers and practitioners through engagement with them.

Actions

• From Autumn 2026, Education Scotland will commence a focused programme of work to support educators in learning about online harms and online safety, the identification of risks and how they can respond to concerns. We know that knowledge and understanding varies across the workforce in our schools and we want to support teachers to support their pupils and understand the online harms faced.
• Education Scotland has worked in partnership with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation to update and deliver training for trainers to local authority safeguarding leads focused on increasing knowledge and understanding of technology facilitated harmful sexual behaviour.
• The focus on digital health and safety within the Health and Wellbeing Curriculum Improvement Cycle will support practitioners by clarifying the knowledge and skills required to use digital devices and the internet more safely, whilst providing clarity about what pupils need to know at each stage.
• In February 2026, the Scottish Government published updated statutory teaching guidance on Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood (RSHP) education. We will continue to promote the revised teaching guidance which reflects the issues currently facing children and young people, especially around inclusivity, consent and healthy relationships as well as the impact of online influences. The revised guidance also contains dedicated ASN requirements, with clearer expectations for differentiated delivery to pupils with ASN who may be more reliant on online access but also more vulnerable to harm.
• The Scottish Government’s continued support for the Digital Discourse Initiative provides teachers, school staff and educators working in Scotland with online professional learning, including on the so-called ‘Manosphere’, and supports staff to challenge online hate and disinformation that we know is impacting girls and female staff in our schools, providing practical strategies and curriculum tools to help counter the effects of online hate on children and young people.
• Building on the comprehensive content currently included on Parent Club, such as the recently published guidance on screen use for children under five, we will engage directly with parents and children and young people on what advice they need and want to support their positive digital behaviours. This will inform how we can best disseminate parental guidance on supporting children’s interaction with digital devices that enables early child development and positive mental and physical wellbeing in the later years.
• Through delivery of the Play Vision Statement and Action Plan 2025-2030, the Scottish Government will review and update information available to parents on safeguarding and supporting children’s play in the digital world via the Parent Club website.
• The CyberScotland Partnership currently reaches audiences across Scotland through multiple channels to deliver cyber security and resilience awareness messaging. We will work with the Partnership to ensure that they signpost and embed the latest online safety advice through their existing channels and communications, including promoting resources such as Parent Club.
• We awarded funding to the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice to provide free access to the digital safeguarding e-learning module produced by them and the Lucy Faithful Foundation. The module aims to equip professionals with tools and resources in working with families where there are risks to a child online, or where the child’s sexual behaviour online is of concern. With substantial downloads already, we will monitor its uptake, learn, and build on it.
• In 2024, the Scottish Government worked with Fearless, Police Scotland and other partners to develop a sextortion campaign. In June 2025, we launched a new sextortion educational resource. The short video provides a concise overview of sextortion, how to recognise it, what to do. A practitioner’s guide has been developed to help adults talk to young people about the issue. We will monitor the impact of this resource and promote its uptake. Following the campaign, we established a national sextortion oversight group to improve our response in this area. The group has already met twice and will consider how to work with third sector organisations to improve our data on the issue.
• In August 2024, the Scottish Government introduced refreshed guidance to schools on the use of mobile phones in schools, as part of the joint action plan to respond to the Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research (BISSR) 2023. BISSR identified the disruption caused in class by the misuse of devices as the behaviour that had the greatest impact on secondary teachers’ day to day teaching experience. Helping to build our evidence base, the 2026 BISSR will include a new question asking head teachers about the frequency of incidents relating to the inappropriate use of digital technology (such as sending inappropriate intimate images, online bullying, or inappropriate use of social media).