The head teacher of a Fife secondary school faces a lengthy jail sentence after admitting possession of nearly 3,000 graphic images and videos of children being sexually abused.

David Wilson, 48, was remanded in custody after he appeared at the High Court in Glasgow on Friday.

The court heard nearly 1,000 of the images he possessed showed babies and toddlers being abused. In many of the pictures, clear pain and distress was visible on the children's faces.

The 48-year-old former head of Auchmuty High was arrested as part of the ongoing investigation following on from the discovery of Scotland's worst paedophile ring.

On Thursday, ringleaders James Rennie and Neil Strachan were handed life sentences for a catalogue of child porn and abuse offences, as well as conspiring to abuse children.

Rennie will serve at least 13 years while Strachan will have to serve 16 years before he will be eligible for parole.

Strachan, 40, and Rennie, 38, were snared alongside six other men linked through online chat rooms following a major 18-month police investigation. The others had already been jailed for a total of 43 years.

Rennie repeatedly abused the toddler son of a couple who were close friends while he was supposed to be babysitting. He then issued an apology for his behaviour through his lawyer.

Speaking after the sentencing, the child's mother said: "I think he's very sorry he's been caught and he's very sorry he's in the position he's in. And I would expect him to still be abusing my son if he hadn't been caught.

"I don't accept it because he doesn't really mean anything to me anymore and it means nothing, really. I think he's just he's very sorry he's been caught."

Sentencing, Lord Bannatyne told Rennie: "You were, in my judgment, like a spider at the centre of this conspiracy, weaving an electronic web bringing to fruition this appalling crime."

Following the sentencing, police revealed that the web reached further than the eight men already jailed.

They said Operation Algebra had so far identified a further 80 individuals with possible connections to the child abuse network, 60 of whom had already been charged.

Among them were Wilson and a Lothians man also accused of hoarding child porn images.

The police inquiry titled Operation Algebra has traced many more.

Scotland's eight police forces have also now teamed up with the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency to launch Operation Alba, using secret technology to target paedophiles on the internet.

Iain Livingstone from the Association of Chief Police Officers said: "We're not going to wait for them to come us, we're not going to wait until we come across them, we're going to pro-actively seek them out.

"People who are out there, who think they are off the radar, we need to find them, because online child abuse is despicable."