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8th July 2025

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The latest update to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2025 was released on the GOV.UK website on 7th July 2025.

This guidance will come into effect September 2025. Until then, the previous KCSIE 2024 is still being enforced. 

This applies to all schools and colleges in England. It sets out the legal duties that must be followed to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18.

It’s important to be aware of the changes to this year’s KCSIE and how they will impact education practice from September 2025. We’ve created this summary for you to help break down some of the major changes within the guidance.

This section notes that revised guidance on Relationships, Sex and Health Education is expected to be published this summer and if published, this will be signposted here in September 2025.

In relation to online safety, this section has been updated to clarify that misinformation, disinformation (including fake news) and conspiracy theories are classed as safeguarding harms.

The filtering and monitoring section of the guidance now includes a link to the departments ‘plan technology for your school service’ tool which allows schools to self-assess against the filtering and monitoring standards and receive personalised recommendations on how the school can meet them. This section also now includes linked Department for Education guidance on how to safely use generative AI in education to support schools and colleges.

The ‘information security and access management’ section has been amended to clarify that the cyber security standards for schools and colleges advice was developed to support schools to improve their cyber resilience.

Information has been added to the ‘alternate provision’ section to clarify and reflect existing alternate provision guidance. This section provides schools with guidance on how to effectively safeguard pupils attending a placement in an alternative provision.

The updated guidance continues to identify one group of children at greater risk of harm, as those who are absent from education. The guidance highlights and clarifies that the ‘working together to improve school attendance’ document is now statutory.

The section focusing on ‘virtual school heads’ now explicitly states that the role of the virtual head has been extended to include responsibility for promoting the educational achievement of children in kinship care.

A note has been added to the ‘children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or gender questioning’ section that the Department for Education plan to publish revised guidance on gender questioning children this summer and if published, this guidance will be signposted to in September 2025. The terms ‘spectrum’ and ‘disorder’ have also been removed from paragraph 205 when discussing the additional vulnerabilities of those questioning their gender also having a diagnosis of Autism and/or ADHD.

Any references to the TRA’s Employer Access Service have been removed and replaced with a new link to the GOV.UK page. Further references to the Employer Secure Access have been removed and replaced with a link to GOV.UK for S128 checks.

Further information outlining safer recruitment checks for staff safeguarding pupils attending an alternative provision placement has been added to this section in paragraph 331.

The ‘record keeping’ section has been adjusted to correct the title of the Information Commissioner’s employment practice guidance which provides practical advice on record retention.

The section which focuses on ‘safeguarding and supporting the alleged perpetrators and children and young people who have displayed sexual behaviours’ has been updated with a link to the ‘Lucy Faithfull Foundation’s Shore Space Tool’. This link offers a confidential chat service that aims to support young people concerned about their own or someone else’s sexual thoughts or behaviours.

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2025-07-07T14:50:13+01:00
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