KCSIE 2026: What’s changed and what to do next

The Department for Education released Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 on 7 July 2026. The guidance takes effect on 1 September 2026 and replaces the 2025 version. That gives safeguarding leads the summer to update policies and brief staff.

Last year’s update was largely maintenance. This year’s is more substantial. KCSIE 2026 responds to new legislation, including the Crime and Policing Act 2026 and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, and includes the guidance on gender-questioning pupils that KCSIE 2025 flagged as forthcoming. Several changes carry real operational weight, not just wording updates.

Each year, we gather the views of tens of thousands of pupils, staff and parents on how safe they feel in and out of school. In 2022, we partnered with The Key on England’s largest pupil-safeguarding survey. More than 70,000 pupils across 373 schools and 41 trusts took part. One finding still resonates: one in ten pupils had missed school in the previous six months because they felt unsafe. Our latest joint research with STEER, What Schools See, What Pupils Feel, adds to that picture: pupils reporting feeling safe in class has fallen from 72% to 64% since 2020/21, and trust in other people has declined too, the kind of trend that makes reporting culture harder to build. Pupil voice sits behind every recommendation in this piece. 

Priority actions before September

Every change in KCSIE 2026 needs to be reflected in your policies and staff briefing by 1 September. This isn’t a shortlist of everything required for compliance. The items below stand out because they involve new processes or documentation, not just updated wording, and are the ones most likely to catch a trust out if left until the autumn term.

All staff must now read Part One in full

KCSIE 2025 let staff who don’t work directly with children read a condensed version of Part One, set out in its own annex. KCSIE 2026 removes that annex entirely. Every member of staff, including catering, site and administrative teams, must now read the full Part One. Induction processes and annual safeguarding training need updating to reflect this, and trusts should be able to evidence that all staff, not just teaching staff, have completed it.

Volunteer DBS checks now cover more people

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 removes the “supervision exemption” from the legal definition of regulated activity. A supervised volunteer, such as a reading helper or sports coach, could previously work without an enhanced DBS check. From September, any volunteer teaching, training, instructing or supervising children on more than three days in a 30-day period, or overnight, falls into regulated activity and needs an enhanced check with barred list information. Trusts should audit their volunteer rosters now rather than in the autumn term.

Operation Encompass is now a statutory duty

Since November 2025, police forces in England and Wales must notify a child’s school when there are reasonable grounds to believe the child may be a victim of domestic abuse. Previously, this ran as a voluntary scheme in some areas. It is now a legal requirement everywhere. Designated safeguarding leads need a clear, confidential process for receiving and acting on these notifications, including cover arrangements for when the DSL is unavailable. A notification does not replace a separate safeguarding referral where the child’s circumstances warrant one.

Gender-questioning pupils have a documented policy framework

KCSIE 2025 had five paragraphs on this area and promised fuller guidance was on its way. KCSIE 2026 delivers it: a new section running to around 30 paragraphs (252 to 282), setting out a documented decision-making process for requests to socially transition, how the Equality Act 2010 and Human Rights Act 1998 apply, and explicit expectations on toilets, changing rooms, PE and boarding accommodation. This is a policy-writing task for the summer, best started well before the September staff briefing. A documented, consistently applied process protects pupils and staff alike. The guidance also expects schools to engage parents as a matter of priority in most circumstances, so it’s worth pairing this policy work with a wider check on how parents experience communication and trust with your school. Our parent survey templates cover this ground. 

Two more changes worth your attention

Part five’s rewrite

Child-on-child sexual harassment and sexual violence guidance now frames incidents as a continuum from harmful sexual behaviour through to sexual violence, rather than treating each incident type in isolation. Any sharing of nudes or semi-nudes, including AI-generated images, now requires a safeguarding response regardless of consent. New links point staff to NSPCC resources on typical sexual development by age and on responding to sexualised behaviour. A new “Referrals to Family Help” section clarifies when a concern needs targeted early help rather than a statutory referral. For anyone working on reporting culture or pupil voice, this section carries more weight than anything else in the round-up below.

Early help terminology has changed throughout

KCSIE 2026 distinguishes consistently between “universal services and community-based early help” and “the targeted early help level of Family Help.” Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026, the companion multi-agency guidance, confirms the same shift: Family Help is now a formal, local-authority-coordinated, consent-based offer, distinct from universal early help. Trusts will need to update how they describe thresholds and referral routes to staff and to families.

The rest of the changes, in brief

• Reasonable force and restrictive intervention: paragraphs 203 to 205 reflect new national guidance issued in April 2026, worth checking for any school with above-average use of physical intervention.
• Mobile phones: schools are now expected to be phone-free environments by default, with exceptions rather than the norm.
• Temporary accommodation: local housing authorities must notify schools when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. DSLs should build this into the same notification processes as Operation Encompass.
• Generative AI: expanded guidance covers safe classroom use and product safety expectations for schools procuring AI tools.
• Two new dedicated sections cover young carers and safeguarding children with medical conditions.
• RSHE guidance is being revised for introduction in September 2026, the same date as KCSIE 2026.

The headline tweaks for 2025

KCSIE 2026 also includes its own full paragraph-by-paragraph change log at Annex C: Summary of changes (pages 189 to 195), for anyone who wants to go beyond this round-up.

Why this matters for leaders

The volume of change makes triage essential this year. Inspectors will expect safeguarding and recruitment policies to reflect the new regulated activity threshold immediately, so this is not one to leave until the autumn INSET day.

The gender-questioning section deserves particular care. It sits across safeguarding, equality and human rights law, and getting the policy and staff briefing right will matter more to your community than most other changes in this update combined.

Practical steps before the end of August

1. Update induction and annual safeguarding training so all staff, not just teaching staff, read Part One in full, and keep a record showing this.
2. Audit volunteer safeguarding checks against the new regulated activity threshold and flag anyone who now needs an enhanced DBS check.
3. Build the Operation Encompass and temporary accommodation notification workflows into your DSL’s day-to-day process, including cover arrangements.
4. Draft or update your gender-questioning pupils policy by working through the decision-making process in paragraphs 258 to 282 before briefing staff and governors.

How Edurio can help

A policy is only as strong as the culture behind it. Our Pupil Safeguarding survey gives leaders a clear picture of pupils’ safeguarding experiences and how well current practice is landing, so training time goes where it is needed most.