KCSiE 2025 guidance: What schools need to know

The new Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE) 2025 guidance has landed with little fanfare or change. Schools and colleges, however, will need to be aware of updates to the Department for Education’s (DfE) statutory guidance on safeguarding children and safer recruitment.

Here are the four things you need to know.

1. Possible further updates

The current version refers to signposting to new relationship, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance due out this summer. So we might see a further minor tweak to KCSIE 2025 before September. 

No amendments are suggested, just signposting. Annex F also refers to future iterations reflecting the progress into legislation of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the learnings from the Casey Audit, and the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy.

Does that mean we might see an in-year update? I would have thought not, but given some of these changes – not least the enactment of the Children’s Wellbeing and School’s Bill – could be imminent, perhaps there is an outside chance of an update before September 2026.

2. Online safety

An interesting update. Paragraph 135 splits the risk into four categories – content, contact, conduct and commerce. The 2025 guidance has added to the content section “misinformation, disinformation (including fake news) and conspiracy theories”. 

This is a useful and necessary development, making it clear that misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories can be – as we know – safeguarding issues. I’d recommend covering this in inset training to ensure staff are aware of this important update.

3. Filtering and monitoring

Two tweaks: adding a link to the DfE’s Plan technology for your school guidance (published last year) and adding a link to the DfE’s Generative AI: product safety expectations guidance, published in January 2025. 

The guidance is aimed at edtech developers, but schools also need to know which steps to take when using AI in schools generally, and specifically in safeguarding, bringing into the mix data protection and good AI governance. 

To help with that, our AI governance support pack for schools is worth a look.

4. Alternative provision 

An extra couple of paragraphs have been added, which reinforce that schools remain responsible for the safeguarding of pupils it places in alternative provision. 

Those paragraphs expect schools to obtain written confirmation from the provider that appropriate safeguarding checks have been carried out, and confirmation the provider will inform the school of any arrangements that may put the child at risk.

Some further expectations have also been brought into the guidance, but all of them are lifted from the current (February 2025) statutory guidance Arranging Alternative Provision, A Guide for Local Authorities and Schools, so they add no additional expectation. So in short, while it’s new to KCSIE, it’s not a new requirement.

Final thoughts

As usual, your next steps are updating policy and planning your staff updates to make sure they are aware of the changes. 

Given there are only a few updates, both steps should be relatively straightforward. Don’t forget governor and trustees – they need updating too. 

If you need help with HR and education policies or board training, please do get in touch.