Keeping children safe in education: the records it asks for.

What KCSIE is, and who must follow it

Keeping children safe in education is statutory guidance from the Department for Education. It sets out the legal duties schools in England must comply with to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people under the age of 18. Schools and colleges must have regard to it; it is not optional safeguarding guidance.

It applies to all schools and colleges in England: maintained schools, academies and free schools, independent schools, non-maintained special schools, pupil referral units and alternative provision. Governors and trustees are in scope as well as education staff, and Ofsted inspects against it.

Statutory means it is not advice. Governing bodies, proprietors and school and college staff must have regard to it, and inspectors will expect to see that you have. It is read alongside Working together to safeguard children, which covers the wider multi-agency system including social care.

The current version is Keeping children safe in education 2026, in force from 1 September 2026. It replaced KCSIE 2025. Because it is reissued annually, the single most useful habit is to check the date on the copy your school is actually working from each September.

Alongside it sit the DfE's departmental advice and the Prevent duty guidance, plus your local safeguarding partnership's own guidance and resources. KCSIE is the statutory safeguarding spine; those fill in the detail on specific safeguarding issues.

The five parts of KCSIE

The guidance for schools and colleges is organised in five parts, and knowing which part answers which question saves a great deal of searching.

Part 1 is the one all education staff must read. It sets out what schools expect of every adult in the building: how to recognise that a child is being abused, what to do if you are worried a child is at risk of harm, and how early help works before a concern becomes a referral to children's social care.

1. Part 1: safeguarding information for all staff. What every member of school and college staff should know and do - the forms abuse and neglect take, the specific safeguarding issues such as child criminal exploitation, county lines, child sexual exploitation, domestic abuse and female genital mutilation, and what to do if they have safeguarding concerns.
2. Part 2: the management of safeguarding. The responsibilities of governing bodies and proprietors, the role of the designated safeguarding lead, online safety, filtering and monitoring, and the policies that must be in place.
3. Part 3: safer recruitment. The checks required for anyone working in or visiting a school or college, including regulated activity and the single central record.
4. Part 4: allegations made about staff. How to manage concerns and allegations about teachers and other staff, including supply teachers, volunteers and contractors.
5. Part 5: child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment. How schools and colleges should respond when children abuse other children.

Behind the five parts sit the annexes, which is where a good deal of the practical material lives.

Part 5 is worth naming properly, because the shorthand hides it: sexual harassment between children, and sexual violence, in schools and colleges. Harassment between children in schools is treated as a safeguarding matter rather than as behaviour, which is a distinction that changes who handles it.

The annexes carry information on specific safeguarding issues - one entry per issue, designed to help a designated safeguarding lead brief staff quickly rather than to be read end to end. Part 1 is different: every member of staff must read part one in full, and the school records that they have.

What changed in KCSIE 2026

One change is worth knowing even if you read nothing else, because it changes who has to read what.

The shorter version of part 1 has been removed from Annex A. The Department for Education's stated effect is that all staff now follow the same safeguarding expectations, and that governing bodies and proprietors should make sure that all staff read part 1, including those who do not work directly with children. Schools that had been issuing the condensed version to caretakers, catering, office and site staff need to change what they hand out and re-record who has read what.

The full summary of changes introduced in Keeping children safe in education 2026 is in Annex C. Read that annex rather than any third-party summary, including this one: the changes are the part most likely to be reported inaccurately, and yours is the version that matters.

For the avoidance of doubt on dates: KCSIE 2026 comes into force on 1 September 2026 and replaces the version that came into force in September 2025. Annex C summarises the changes; additional information on each specific safeguarding issue sits in the annexes rather than in the five parts.

What KCSIE requires you to record

Recording is not gathered into one section, which is part of why it is easy to miss. It appears as an obligation in four different places.

The through-line is that statutory guidance for schools treats recording as part of safeguarding practice, not as administration that follows it. Safeguarding children and promoting the welfare of children both depend on somebody being able to see a pattern later, and a pattern is only visible in writing.

• Concerns raised by staff. Part 1 is clear that any member of staff with a concern about a child should act immediately and speak to the designated safeguarding lead. Schools are expected to keep detailed, accurate and securely held written records of concerns, even where there is no referral, because a pattern only becomes visible across several small entries.
• Decisions and their reasons. It is not enough to record that a concern was raised. What was decided, by whom, and why - including a decision to take no further action - is what a later review will ask for.
• Allegations about staff. Part 4 sets expectations for recording allegations and their outcome, including what is placed on a personnel file and how long it is kept.
• Recruitment and vetting checks. Part 3 requires the single central record, covered below.

Two qualities are asked for repeatedly and are worth holding onto: records should be contemporaneous, written at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards, and they should be legible to somebody else. A record only you can interpret is not a record the school can produce.

Concerns about another staff member follow the part 4 route rather than the ordinary one, and should be recorded there. Your child protection policy should say which route applies to what, in words a new member of staff can act on in their first week.

The purpose of all of it is narrow and worth restating: to reduce the risk of harm to children in schools and colleges by making sure that what one adult noticed is available to the next one. Working with children and families depends on that continuity, and continuity is a records property.

The single central record

Part 3 requires every school and college to maintain a single central record of the recruitment and vetting checks carried out on staff, and on governors and volunteers where relevant. It is the one KCSIE record with a name of its own, and the one an inspector will ask for first.

It is a register rather than a filing cabinet: it records that a check was done and when, while the underlying evidence sits elsewhere. Keeping it accurate as people join and leave is ordinary administrative discipline, and it is the most common place a school is found wanting for reasons that have nothing to do with child protection practice.

Records that have to follow a child

Child protection files are transferred to a new school or college when a child moves, separately from the main pupil file and within a short, specified window. The receiving school needs the material before it needs it, which is the whole point.

This is where recording quality becomes visible. A file of dated, specific entries transfers meaning. A file of thin notes referring to conversations held elsewhere transfers paper. Schools receiving a child mid-year will recognise the difference immediately.

The recording gap most schools have

Ask a school where its safeguarding records are and the answer is confident: the safeguarding system, the child protection file, the single central record. Those are usually in good order.

Now ask where a concern is first raised. Increasingly it is a message between two members of staff at the end of a day, a photograph sent to a phone, a question in a staff group chat about whether anyone else has noticed something about a child. That is the moment KCSIE part 1 is describing - a member of staff acting on a concern - and it is happening on personal devices the school does not own.

The consequence is not that the concern goes unrecorded, though sometimes it does. It is that the school cannot evidence the sequence. When a local authority enquiry or a serious case review asks what was known and when, the safeguarding system shows the entry made two days later and nothing about the two days before it. Where staff acted well and early, that is precisely the evidence that cannot be produced.

This is a governance question rather than a safeguarding-practice one, and it is worth ten minutes with your designated safeguarding lead whether or not anything changes. Two honest limits, including on products like ours: nothing lawful can read a member of staff's personal phone or recover conversations that have already happened, and a policy banning group chats without providing something equally quick simply moves them. Our guide to staff WhatsApp groups in schools covers what a workable policy actually says.

Where to read the guidance

Read the source. Keeping children safe in education on GOV.UK carries the full document, part 1 on its own, and the part one overview for all staff. Annex C has the summary of changes. NSPCC Learning publishes a reliable briefing each year, and your local safeguarding partnership sets the referral routes your staff actually follow.

This page is a summary of statutory guidance, not a substitute for it and not legal advice. Where a decision concerns a specific child, follow your own procedures and speak to your designated safeguarding lead.

Related guides

• Staff WhatsApp groups in schools: the rules and what a policy should say
• WhatsApp in schools: parents, staff and the rules that apply
• Safeguarding: the six principles and the five Rs

All guides