Of all the lessons in this series, this is the one to prepare most carefully, because the odds are high that at least one pupil in the room has already experienced something on the spectrum you are about to describe. Online grooming is not rare, it is not confined to any type of child, and it very often does not look like the stranger-danger picture adults grew up with. The typical case I dealt with started on an ordinary platform, a game, a social app, a group chat, and moved fast: flattery, secrecy, then requests for images, and then, increasingly commonly, threats. Teach this lesson on the assumption that you are speaking directly to a child it is already happening to, because you probably are.
That assumption changes your tone. The single biggest reason children do not report grooming and sextortion is shame, and the fear that they will be blamed or lose their phone. Every minute of this lesson should be quietly hammering the same message: whatever has happened, however far it has gone, it is not your fault, you will not be in trouble, and telling an adult makes it stop. KCSIE 2026 is blunt that any incident involving nude or semi-nude images, whether consensual, coerced, real or AI-generated, requires a safeguarding response rather than a disciplinary one, and your classroom manner should signal that culture before any disclosure is ever made.
By the end of the lesson pupils should be able to describe how grooming develops online, recognise the specific tactics of flattery, isolation, secrecy and threat, understand that the law protects them and criminalises the adult, know what sextortion is and why paying or complying never works, and know the exact routes to help, including CEOP and Report Remove.
Grooming is a process, not an event, and it follows a recognisable shape. Contact often begins somewhere public, a game lobby, a comment section, a group chat, and moves quickly to private messaging. The groomer invests in the child: compliments, attention, sympathy about school or home, sometimes gifts or in-game currency. They mirror the child's interests and grievances, and they work to become the person who understands them best. Then comes the wedge: our chats are special, your parents wouldn't get it, keep this between us. Secrecy is the load-bearing wall of every grooming case. Once isolation is established, requests escalate, and if images are obtained the dynamic can flip overnight from affection to blackmail.
Two modern features deserve particular attention. First, financially motivated sextortion, which has grown sharply and disproportionately targets boys: the offender poses as an attractive peer, obtains an image quickly, then immediately demands money with threats to send the image to the victim's followers. The National Crime Agency has issued repeated national alerts about this pattern, and it moves from first contact to threat in hours, not weeks. Second, AI-generated imagery. KCSIE 2026 introduces explicit coverage of deepfakes and digitally generated indecent images, and pupils need to know that an offender does not need a real photograph to make a threat, and that a fake image triggers exactly the same safeguarding response and exactly the same help.
The detail that most changes how children respond: groomers are rarely clumsy strangers announcing themselves as adults. Many pose convincingly as teenagers, and some spend weeks in a group's online orbit before ever messaging the target. And a proportion of exploitation is peer-to-peer or channelled through other young people. So the useful question for pupils is not "do you know this person?" but "how does this person make me feel about keeping secrets?" Anyone, of any claimed age, who pushes for secrecy, moves the chat somewhere private, or asks for images is showing you the pattern, and the pattern is the warning.
The law is firmly on the child's side, and pupils should hear that clearly. Sexual communication with a child is a specific criminal offence under section 15A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and arranging to meet a child following grooming has been an offence for over two decades. Making, possessing or distributing indecent images of anyone under 18 is criminal, and that includes AI-generated images of real children. What matters for your classroom is the safeguarding corollary: a child who has been manipulated into sending an image is treated by police as a victim to be protected. The Online Safety Act 2023 has also placed legal duties on platforms themselves to protect children from this material, which is worth mentioning because it tells pupils the adult world has finally accepted that this is not their problem to solve alone.
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 5 mins | Starter. Ask the class how you can tell who someone really is online. Let them offer verification ideas, then gently establish the honest answer, that you often cannot, and that this lesson is about spotting behaviour rather than identity. |
| 10 mins | How grooming works. Walk through the pattern using the presentation: contact, attention, secrecy, escalation, threat. Keep the language plain and non-graphic. The aim is recognition, not fear. |
| 15 mins | Red flags activity. Pupils work through the message transcripts on the handout, marking the exact lines where something turns. Feedback should draw out that individual messages look innocent, and the pattern across messages is what gives it away. This is the core skill of the lesson. |
| 10 mins | Sextortion input. Cover the money-demand pattern directly and calmly: it escalates fast, paying never makes it stop, and the correct response is to stop replying, save evidence, block, and tell an adult. Emphasise the NCA's core message that the police response to a young victim is protection, and that no image is ever worth a life. This section matters most for the boys in the room, and they should hear that it targets boys especially. |
| 15 mins | Getting help, and the plenary. Introduce CEOP reporting via ceop.police.uk, the Childline and IWF Report Remove tool that can get images taken down for under 18s, in-app reporting and blocking, and above all a trusted adult. Close by asking pupils to write one sentence they would say to a friend who told them something like this had happened. Collect these; they double as your assessment and your safeguarding radar. |
Expect disclosure, during or after, and often days later once a pupil has tested the water with a hypothetical. The "asking for a friend" question is a disclosure until proven otherwise. Receive it without visible alarm, do not promise secrecy, do not ask to see images, and never ask the child to forward anything. Report to your DSL the same day. If images are involved, KCSIE 2026 and the UK Council for Internet Safety guidance are clear that devices should not be examined or copied by school staff beyond what is needed to make the report, and that the response is safeguarding-led. Where an offence is disclosed, the DSL will involve police; the College of Policing's guidance on investigating child sexual abuse and exploitation puts the child's welfare at the centre of any investigation, and specialist officers, not uniformed drama, handle these cases.
Be careful with the emotional temperature of the room. Do not use real case names or local incidents, keep examples generic, and give pupils a legitimate way to disengage, such as a note-taking role, if the content lands close to home. Brief your DSL that the lesson is running that day, so any surge of disclosures lands on a prepared desk.
The pattern is the warning: secrecy, private chats, and requests for images are red flags whoever the person claims to be. Nothing that has happened is the child's fault, and no situation is unfixable, including images already sent, which Report Remove can help take down. Never pay, never comply with threats, always tell. And the adult who receives that disclosure will not shout, will not confiscate the phone as a punishment, and will know exactly what to do.
For pupils: any trusted adult in school, Childline on 0800 1111, the CEOP Safety Centre at ceop.police.uk for reporting online sexual abuse, and Report Remove via Childline for getting images removed. For staff: your DSL, the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000, the Professionals Online Safety Helpline (0344 381 4772) for advice on any online incident, and the Internet Watch Foundation for reporting illegal imagery. In an emergency, or if a child is at immediate risk of meeting an offender, call 999 without hesitation.