Teachers are being targeted by abusive and humiliating TikTok accounts set up by students, prompting a warning from schools that parents may face police action over offending posts. Officials at the Department for Education have said they are engaging with the social media giant after headteachers complained of dozens of cases of teachers being targeted. The Association of School and College Leaders, which represents most secondary school heads, said it had received mounting complaints from its members. A spokesperson for the DfE said it was never acceptable for teachers or other staff to be harassed or intimidated using social media. “We are engaging with TikTok on the steps being taken by them to address this issue involving teachers. “We are clear that social media companies need to take action against harmful content on their platforms and we are introducing laws which will usher in a new era of accountability for these social media companies,” a spokesperson for the government said. A number of schools have already written directly to parents, warning that the police would be involved in cases where pupils are found to have set up accounts identifying or purporting to belong to a teacher. Plantsbrook school in Sutton Coldfield told parents it was “aware of a current ‘challenge’ circulating on TikTok encouraging school students to make dummy accounts and post unpleasant content that vilifies teachers at their school. “We are aware of at least two accounts that are currently targeting Plantsbrook teachers. This is happening in other Birmingham schools too and the police are aware and involved in some cases already.” Headteachers told Schools Week that complaints to TikTok about abusive posts or accounts rarely received a response, with no action taken in most cases. Geoff Barton, general secretary of ASCL, said his union had received more than 50 complaints about TikTok accounts, but said it was likely to be a much larger problem that could lead to pupils being excluded from school. “These posts are often defamatory and offensive, and some are homophobic. Schools tell us that they have asked TikTok to remove them but TikTok has often failed to act despite these posts clearly breaching the platform’s community guidelines,” Barton said. “TikTok has replied to us to say it is investigating the issue and that it is using a combination of technologies and moderation teams to identify and remove content or accounts that violate its community guidelines. It says it has acted against a large number of accounts already. It has also offered to meet with us to discuss its response in more detail. “We welcome this action and hope this matter can be resolved swiftly.” A spokesperson for TikTok said: “Our community guidelines make clear that we do not tolerate content that contains bullying or harassment, statements targeting an individual, or hateful speech or behaviour, and we remove content that violates these guidelines.”