Pupils ‘secretly recording videos of teachers’ as disturbing deep-fakes exposed

A recent trend on TikTok sees recordings of teachers being used and manipulated by AI-generated video to show them shouting abuse at kids, NASUWT teaching union warned

Pupils are secretly recording teachers and manipulating the footage with AI to make it look like they’re screaming abuse at kids, a leading teaching union has said.

NASUWT union, which represents around 300,000 teachers across the UK, said the deep-fake clips are designed to damage staff professionally and personally.

A recent trend on TikTok sees recordings of teachers being used and manipulated by AI-generated video to show them shouting and swearing at pupils in their classrooms, the union warned. It said the recordings are “leaving teachers exposed to false allegations, online abuse and significant mental distress”.

One video on the social media platform shows a teacher shouting and slamming down papers on the desk, with a caption saying: “Average UK school lesson.”

Another shows a male teacher screeching at students, telling them they will “spend the rest of your miserable lives in Leicester” because they weren’t working hard enough on their GCSEs.

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Matt Wrack, NASUWT’s general secretary, said: “Teachers are facing a terrifying new frontier of digital harassment. The ability to secretly record, edit or fabricate footage of staff poses a profound threat to their safety, dignity and professional standing.”

He also referenced other examples of online abuse including a horrific case of upskirting – a criminal offence where someone takes a picture under a person’s clothing – in which a teacher was forced to work with the same student again.

He said: “There are things that in any other walk of life would be deemed to be completely unacceptable, but in a school, are somehow deemed part of the job.”

Mr Wrack said the same was true about increased physical violence against teachers, which he said is at a “shocking level”.

The former General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union and an ex-President of the TUC said: “I’ve dealt with violence at work issues before, but it strikes me that this is hugely under-recognised. There has been a major recognition of violence at work in relation to ambulance staff or retail staff, but not in relation to teaching.”

Mr Wrack spoke to reporters ahead of NASUWT’s annual conference next week, where teaches are expected to voice their concerns over the Government’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reforms. He indicated a storm was brewing and suggested thousands of teachers could take strike action amid fears of increased workload and pressure to implement the changes.

“I think our frustration is that we don’t feel that teachers’ experiences have been adequately built into the SEND consultation document,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“There’s quite a bit of frustration on our part on a number of fronts. Firstly, that the existing problems in schools, we don’t think have been addressed. So issues around workload and hours have not been addressed. But we’re now discussing a whole new raft of responsibilities.

“And then the detail of what is meant by inclusion and how it might be delivered. We’ve picked up on the £200million for training (teachers). While any increase in funding is welcome, you also have to measure that against what is actually needed. And we’re not convinced that that figure delivers the scale of training that would be needed on this issue.

“And what we would not be willing to accept is teachers having some fairly basic training and then being told that they now have new responsibilities and they’ll then be inspected against those new responsibilities.”