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Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2025 changes

10 July, 2025

KCSIE 2025: What’s changed and what to do next

Get up to speed with the latest changes to the Keeping Children Safe in Education guidelines for 2025/26.

The Department for Education released the Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025 “information version” on 7 July 2025. The guidance comes into force on 1 September 2025, giving safeguarding leads eight weeks in the summer to brief colleagues and align policies.

Each year, we gather the perspectives of tens of thousands of pupils, staff, and parents on their sense of safety, wellbeing, and support in educational settings. By analysing this feedback, we help leaders translate policy into lived experience.

In Autumn 2022, we partnered with The Key to run England’s largest pupil‑safeguarding survey: more than 70,000 pupils across 373 schools and 41 trusts shared how safe they feel in and out of school. Despite this research being conducted nearly 3 years ago, one finding still resonates today: 1 in 10 pupils had missed school in the previous 6 months because they felt unsafe. Pupil Voice sits at the heart of the actions outlined in this blog.

What is KCSIE, and why is it being updated?

Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guides trust leaders, headteachers, teachers, staff, governing bodies, proprietors and management committees by providing them with the legal duties schools and educational professionals must follow to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18 in an educational setting. The new KCSIE guidance will come into action from 1st September 2025 and replace the 2024 equivalent.

KCSIE is updated regularly to reflect changes in the sector and to ensure that all threats, challenges and changes in society are reflected in the guidance for school staff.

The headline tweaks for 2025

Theme New detail (from Annex F)
Forthcoming guidance KCSIE now flags that revised Relationship, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) guidance and advice on gender-questioning pupils are expected this summer and will be signposted once published.
Online harms The list of harms has been expanded to name misinformation, disinformation (including “fake news”) and conspiracy theories.
Digital resilience New links direct schools to the DfE’s filtering-and-monitoring self-assessment tool, cybersecurity standards, and fresh guidance on using generative AI.
Attendance Working Together to Improve School Attendance is now confirmed as statutory, reflecting the daily data-sharing duty introduced in 2024.
Virtual School Heads Their non-statutory remit now explicitly includes promoting the educational achievement of children in kinship care.
Alternative Provision Schools commissioning AP must secure written confirmation of safeguarding checks, maintain an up-to-date record of all sites attended, and review placements promptly if concerns arise.

Why this matters for leaders

These amendments may look modest, yet each one carries operational weight:

  • Policy traceability – Inspectors will expect every reference in your safeguarding and attendance policies to align with the 2025 text.
  • Staff confidence – Frontline colleagues need clear, concise briefings that distinguish genuinely new expectations (e.g. misinformation, daily attendance returns) from simple re-ordering of paragraphs.

Strategic planning – Anticipated RSHE and gender-questioning guidance could affect curriculum, parental communication and staff training budgets mid-year.

Three practical steps before the end of August

  • Circulate Part One now. Encourage staff to read on a screen so hyperlinks to the new digital safety tools are live.
  • Map the changes against your documentation. Use Annex F as a checklist to update policy wording, safeguarding flowcharts and governor reports.
  • Schedule a 20-minute INSET slot. Focus on how new requirements alter day-to-day practice, particularly online safety responses and attendance monitoring, rather than walking through every page.

How Edurio can help

A policy is only as strong as the culture behind it. Our Pupil Safeguarding survey provides in-depth insights into pupils’ safeguarding experiences, evaluating the effectiveness of safeguarding strategies and alignment with KCSIE guidelines. Marrying the survey’s insights with your KCSIE review ensures that training time is allocated where it is most needed.

Book a walkthrough: Contact our team for a 30-minute demo and see how quickly you can turn survey findings into targeted action plans.

Updating early means calmer, safer schools in September. Let’s make every day count.