One year on from its landmark report, the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools has published10newfindings examining how the spread of conspiracy beliefs, misinformation, and disinformation in classrooms has evolved over the past 12 months across England.
Evidence gathered through polling and focus groups with parents, pupils, school staff, and – for the first time – youth workers, paints a clear picture: all of these groups identify that the scale of the challenge has grown year-on-year.
- Between 2024 and 2025, the proportion of parents who reported that their children have raised a conspiracy theory with them has jumped by a third from 28% to 38%.
- Concern is growing, with a 35% year-on-year increase in young people identifying misinformation to be an issue in their schools.
- 85% of school staff, 78% of parents and 71% of young people said they felt it was harder to tell what is real and what is fake online.
It is becoming harder to identify what is true and what is false, and this has been accelerated by the proliferation of generative AI content.
“As generations go on, social media is just going to get more and more popular and as is technology in general. So I feel like, as the years go on, it [misinformation] is just going to get spread around, and more people get involved with it, which can be a bad thing.”
Year 10 Pupil, Female, North East
“It’s the AI generated videos…there’s nothing teaching them about real or fake or identifying it.”
Classroom Teacher, Primary, Male, East of England
Teachers tell us they are drawn into difficult – and sometimes adversarial – conversations in classrooms, often without training, lacking confidence, and with a fear of complaint or misinterpretation.
Critically, the evidence reinforces that this is not an issue confined to older pupils: primary schools are encountering it too, with younger children being exposed to offensive and harmful material at an age when their ability to assess it critically is still developing.
The Commission’s latest report presents 10 new findings and sets out an important update on the progress we have made against the 11 recommendations of the first report, published in February 2025.
In summer 2025, we saw the launch of two national programmes, led by the National Institute of Teaching (NIOT) and the Institute of Education (IoE), and funded by the Pears Foundation, established to help equip teachers with practical resources and training to tackle the challenges they are facing in the classroom.
In the corridors of Westminster, conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation in schools has rocketed up the political agenda. The Government has taken vital steps to update the Keeping Children Safe in Education Guidance to include conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation for the first time, and it has committed to embedding media literacy in the curriculum, following the Curriculum and Assessment Review’s adoption of our recommendations.
Sir Trevor Pears CMG, Co-Chair of the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools and Executive Chairman of the Pears Foundation, said:
“The Commission has made real progress in raising this issue with both Whitehall and the education sector, and in the process achieving real change, but we cannot afford to be complacent. This research demonstrates that the spread of conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation online is among the greatest challenges of our age, and teachers are on the frontline. We must do everything we can to support them and protect our children.”
Sir Hamid Patel CBE, Co-Chair of the Commission into Countering Online Conspiracies in Schools and Chief Executive of Star Academies, said:
“Schools are facing a perfect storm of misinformation. False claims are spreading faster and becoming harder to detect. Adults are not immune to this, and misleading information is increasingly shaping the conversations young people encounter not just online, but also at school and at home.
“That raises the importance of curriculum measures that help pupils think critically, weigh evidence and question what they see. In a world of viral deepfakes, malign influencer content and growing uncertainty about what is real, media literacy must be embedded in lessons from primary school to protect children.”
The report’s 10 new findings:
- Conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation are increasingly seen as a problem by young people, parents and school staff.
- Teachers and young people warned that the rise in online conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation is tied to the growth of generative AI content.
- Children and young people are accessing conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation online from a young age, including offensive content.
- Parents play an active role in the spread of conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation amongst young people.
- Teachers feel that parents both compound the challenges of, and complicate their ability to address, online conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation amongst young people.
- Teachers, parents and young people all support the introduction of media literacy into the curriculum.
- However, school staff continue to feel ill-equipped, under-resourced and nervous in tackling online conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation… and this is particularly so amongst primary staff.
- The inclusion of misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy belief within KCSIE has increased awareness of teachers but it has not improved confidence in addressing the challenge.
- The lack of clarity within political impartiality guidance is inhibiting teachers’ ability to address conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation.
- Youth workers recognise that conspiracy belief, misinformation and disinformation is an issue amongst young people, although they see this in the context of wider societal challenges.
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Methodology
The Commission employed a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research to investigate how conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation affect students, school staff, and parents. This included:
- An online survey of 2,075 young people (aged 9 to 18) conducted 15-26 July 2025.
- An online survey of 2,018 parents (of young people aged 9 to 18) conducted 8-22 July 2025.
- An online survey of 524 school staff conducted 4 July-1 August 2025.
- Four focus groups with young people, five teachers/school staff, and two with youth workers.
A full methodology is included in the report.
Polling tables can be found here for pupils, parents and school staff.
