Legal action threat for parents who abuse teachers online

A Scottish teaching union has threatened to sue parents who carry out “sustained attacks” on staff via social media.

The Association of Headteachers and Deputes in Scotland (AHDS) has asked every local authority to report possible cases of defamation after several senior staff said they had been subject to prolonged abuse by parents on Facebook, Twitter and other sites.

General secretary Greg Dempster said parents must raise concerns through official channels rather than resorting to such vilification in the mistaken belief that they were immune from legal action. 

He said: “We took this step because local authorities seemed to have very clear policies about what teachers shouldn’t do online but very little about what would be done to tackle the targeting of headteachers or other school staff through social media.