Keeping Children Safe in Education: Latest guidance

On 1 September 2025, the Department for Education’s updated statutory guidance on safeguarding and child protection (Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE)) came into force.

What is its purpose?

The guidance explains what schools and colleges must do to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18. The education sector is a key part of the wider safeguarding system and all staff working in the sector have a vital part to play in safeguarding children and young people.

Who is affected?

KCSIE applies to all schools and colleges in England including maintained schools, independent schools, non-maintained special schools, nursery schools, colleges and pupil referral units.

Key changes

• The updated KCSIE guidance clarifies that ‘Working Together to Improve School Attendance’ is now statutory guidance.
  • Statutory guidance is guidance that sets out what schools and local authorities must do to comply with the law.
• The updated KCSIE guidance provides additional information on existing alternative provision guidance, clarifying that schools should:
  • gain written confirmation from the alternative provider that appropriate staff safeguarding checks have been carried out, and that they will inform the school of any arrangements that may put the child at risk (such as staff changes)
  • have records of the address of the alternative provider and any subcontracted provision or satellite sites the child may attend, and
  • regularly review any alternative provision placements to make sure the placement continues to be safe and meets the child’s needs. If safeguarding concerns occur, the placement should be immediately reviewed and ended if necessary.
• The guidance notes that revised guidance on Relationships, Sex and Health Education was published in July 2025 for introduction in September 2026.
• A link has been added to the ‘plan technology for your school’ service, which schools can use to assess themselves against the filtering and monitoring standards and receive personalised recommendations on how to meet them.
• A link has been added to DfE guidance on the use of generative AI in education (2025) and its relation to filtering and monitoring standards. As with other IT systems, schools and colleges are advised to:
  • identify and assign roles and responsibilities to manage filtering and monitoring systems
    
    review filtering and monitoring provision at least annually
    
    block harmful and inappropriate content without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning, and
    
    have effective monitoring strategies in place that meet their safeguarding needs.
• References to funding grant support for Senior Mental Health Lead training has been removed as this programme has ended.
• Virtual School Heads: clarity has been added to set out that the role of the virtual head has been extended to include responsibility for promoting the educational achievement of children in kinship care.

In practice, the 2025 guidance mostly contains technical changes from previous versions, however, the Government has indicated that future versions will reflect the:

• Progress into legislation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
  
  Emerging further learnings from the work of the National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and subsequent inquiries, and
  
  Future work on tackling violence against women and girls.

Terminology

There have been a number of changes in terminology:

• ‘Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories’ have been included as examples of safeguarding harms.
  • Disinformation is the deliberate creation and spread of false or misleading content, such as fake news, and
  • Misinformation is the unintentional spread of this false or misleading content.
• Removal of ‘spectrum’ and ‘disorder’ to align with the SEND code of practice, in relation to ‘Children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or gender questioning’. It is expected revised guidance on gender questioning children will be published soon.
• Updated definition of extremism to reflect the definition used within the Prevent guidance.
  • Extremism is the vocal or active opposition to our fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

What does the new guidance mean for your school?

It is important that all staff read the new guidance and that the updates are incorporated into staff training. In particular, staff should be aware that there have been changes in relation to:

• Working Together to Improve School Attendance (now statutory guidance)
  • Have regard to the guidance as part of efforts to maintain high levels of school attendance: Working together to improve school attendance (applies from 19 August 2024).
• Alternative Provision
  • Implement steps to confirm that alternative providers have carried out appropriate safeguarding checks and will provide written information on any arrangements that may put the child at risk;
  • Keep up-to-date records of the address of the alternative provider and any subcontracted provision or satellite sites the child may attend; and
  • Regularly review any alternative provision placements.
• Online safety
  • Take notice of the added terminology to the list of content risks.
• Filtering and Monitoring (AI tools): Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges - Filtering and monitoring standards for schools and colleges
  • Have regard to how filtering and monitoring requirements apply to the use of generative AI in education. In short, generative AI products must:
    • effectively and reliably prevent access to harmful and inappropriate content by users, and
    • maintain robust activity logging procedures.

A link to the updated KCSIE guidance can be found here and a full table of changes can be found in Annex F of KCSIE 2025.