Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) is a document under constant review - perhaps unsurprisingly, given that safeguarding is an ever-changing area and a vital part of schools’ work with children.

Earlier this month the new proposed KCSIE guidance was published for consultation, with many amendments and additions put forward.

So what are the big changes and what are the potential implications for school leaders? 

We took a closer look at the document currently under consultation - containing guidance due to come into force in September 2022 - and spoke to a raft of experts to see what they made of the proposals and what they might mean for schools.

KCSIE: The key proposed changes to safeguarding guidance

1. Social media checks for job applicants

Perhaps the most notable change in the consultation is on page 51, at paragraph 215, which says that when schools are recruiting new staff they “should consider” performing online searches on candidates as part of their shortlisting process:

“As part of the shortlisting process, schools and colleges should consider carrying out an online search (including social media) as part of their due diligence on the shortlisted candidates. This may help identify any incidents or issues that have happened, and are publicly available online, which the school or college might want to explore with the applicant at interview.”

Currently, the KCSIE guidance makes no mention of online searches for prospective new staff, but Simon Bevan, a partner in the education team at VWV Solicitors, says this proposed change is a logical next step, given that since 2016 schools have been advised to perform online searches in advance of guest speakers visiting the school.

“If this is the advice for someone who is always supervised and only with the children for an hour or so, then it’s worth doing for someone who is going to be in the classroom,” says Bevan. 

Bevan also suggests that the online checks before appointment also make sense because it is likely parents may be doing this anyway around any new hire that is announced,

“These will inevitably happen when a new teacher starts at a school, so it’s sensible schools ‘get in there first’,” he adds.

Thomas Michael, a deputy designated safeguarding lead and welfare officer at a secondary school in the West Midlands, makes a similar point, noting that this is advice given to students about their future employers so it makes sense schools should be doing it, too.

“We always warn students about future employers searching their social media prior to interviews,” he says. “So, finally, we seem to have caught up with the advice we administer.”

However, acting on this advice is not straightforward.

Bevan warns leaders that this power needs to be used carefully to avoid accidentally discriminating against a candidate.

“If the school looks at their profile and discovers information that doesn’t go to their suitability to work in a school, then that shouldn’t impact upon your recruitment decision,” he says. “You should only be making decisions on reasonable and objective information.”

Bevan says, for example, if the checks uncover that a candidate is a parent or reveal their sexual orientation, ethnicity or another protected characteristic, that cannot be used as a basis for the decision whether or not to call them for an interview.

“That’s a potential discriminatory situation, and you would be at risk for a discrimination claim,” he warns.

“The online search is to check you’re not recruiting someone who behaves unlawfully, is unsuitable to work with children, and not bringing the school into disrepute,” Bevan says. “You have to be mindful while you’re doing it that you’re not allowing prejudice to come into your decision-making.”

This fear about the potential misuse of online searches is shared by Michael, who makes the point that searches that go too far into the past may bring up “irrelevant” information that prevents a good candidate from being shortlisted.

“The information found might be from more than a decade ago, and suggest types of behaviours or beliefs that aren’t held any more,” he says.

So what can schools do to protect themselves against a potential discrimination case? Bevan suggests using a member of staff who isn’t directly involved in the shortlisting to perform the online searches.

“They could be instructed to only pass on information about suitability to work in a school, keeping anything about protected characteristics confidential,” he says.

Bevan compares the process to equal opportunities data collection - something that “sits outside the recruitment process in the first instance” and “is only introduced to shortlisting if it impacts on their suitability to work with children”.

Michael says that the guidance needs to be more specific, too, “Although it refers to ‘checking social media’, what exactly are they checking for? And how extensively? It needs more clarity,” he adds.

Meanwhile, Craig Keady, a former DSL who now works in teacher recruitment with Satis Education, notes that if this becomes part of the formal documentation later this year, schools will need to create proper processes for doing this to ensure relevant information is found.

“A quick Google search and typing their name into the search bar on Facebook or Twitter is a starting point and will pick up the biggest of issues, but does it tell the whole story given how many platforms there are on social media, and the scale of someone’s digital footprint? Ten per cent of Twitter users have, for example, posted in excess of 1,000 tweets. Do you read them all?” he asks.
 
“The key is to develop a process that systematically reviews an individual’s online profile robustly and fairly.”

2. All governors to receive safeguarding training

On page 22, at paragraph 81, of the consultation document, there is an instruction to leaders that they “should ensure” safeguarding training is part of the induction process for governors and trustees, and the training is “regularly updated”.

“Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure that all governors and trustees receive appropriate safeguarding and child protection training at induction. The training should be regularly updated.”

This follows on from an update to KCSIE that came into effect in September 2021, in which guidance regarding allegations against governors was added - showing that the focus on governors remains a priority.

Fiona Fearon, policy and projects manager at the National Governance Association, says that this change is welcomed by the NGA, and emphasises the key role governors play in ensuring that schools and colleges are safe places for young people to learn.

“One of the most important duties that a governing board fulfils is to ensure that their school or trust is creating safe environments for pupils through robust safeguarding practices,” she adds.

Elizabeth Rose is the director of training provider So Safeguarding and has 15 years of experience working in secondary schools as a designated safeguarding officer, and as the safeguarding education officer in children’s services at Coventry City Council. She agrees that updating KCSIE to ensure that governors are trained in safeguarding “relevant to their roles” is a good step.

“[Governors must be] effective in both identifying things of concern on visits…and have enough knowledge and understanding to ask the right questions and professionally challenge and test what happens in schools,” she explains.

She adds, though, that any change in this area should not mean governors “simply attend whole-staff safeguarding training and nothing else” because, as a governor, they are in a “strategic, not an operational, role” and so would need training specific to their role.

This could mean a lot more work for schools and governors, but Fearon doesn’t anticipate the change overburdening schools and says that actually it serves to “further cement long-held practice already held by governing boards across the country”.

3. Detail on the impact of domestic abuse on children

On page 14, at paragraph 43, of the new KCSIE document, more detail now appears outlining what impact domestic violence might have upon a young person, stating:  

“Domestic abuse can encompass a wide range of behaviours and may be a single incident or a pattern of incidents. Children can be victims of domestic abuse. They may see, hear or experience the effects of abuse at home and/or suffer domestic abuse in their own intimate relationships (teenage relationship abuse). All of which can have a detrimental and long-term impact on their health, wellbeing, development, and ability to learn.”

Up until now, KCSIE has simply listed “domestic abuse” as a potential red flag for schools without extrapolating any further.

In this update, the impact of living with domestic abuse is spelled out for teachers.

Derek Ashworth*, a deputy head and designated safeguarding lead at a large multi-academy trust in Bristol, says this addition is welcome, and that he has become “increasingly concerned about the risks domestic violence poses to children since March 2020”.

This increased concern stems from what he has witnessed as a DSL when processing referrals, and he says “safeguarding cases where domestic abuse is involved have increased threefold”.

As such, he says the update shows that this issue is “being taken seriously” by offering a clearer insight for staff on what domestic abuse can lead to and the impact it can have.

Tali Silas, children and young people officer at Women’s Aid, agrees and notes that this update comes after the ”legal status” of children in domestic abuse cases changed, and this is something schools should be aware of.

“Children are now recognised as victims in their own right in the Domestic Abuse Act,” she says, meaning that children “should receive adequate, individual support to keep them safe in educational settings”.

4. More guidance on Prevent

A small but notable change is found on page 142 in a section entitled “Preventing radicalisation”.

There a link to the website EducateAgainstHate appears - this is a Department for Education-run website that, in its own words, provides “advice and trusted resources for schools to safeguard students from radicalisation”.

The link takes you to a specific web page where there is a list of behaviours to use as a guide to identify possible radicalisation, including: 

• becoming increasingly argumentative;
• unwilling to engage with students who are different;
• becoming abusive to students who are different;
• embracing conspiracy theories.

This addition is welcomed by Michael, who says that raising awareness of the behaviours to look for to indicate potential radicalisation is “absolutely necessary”, and that more training is needed for staff.

“It’s good to see more space given to Prevent in KCSIE because it is clearly an area that deserves more of our attention,” he says. “Prevent information is relatively new to KCSIE, and, understandably, there are gaps in the knowledge of staff.”

Rose agrees that any additional “quality assured recommendations“ are “useful and welcomed” but she is concerned that simply providing a link does not go far enough. “Schools need more support in understanding the changing picture of radicalisation and how this can manifest,” she says.

She adds that problem with the list being linked to is that “some of the suggestions wouldn’t be easily identified” in an education setting and more direct terms and phrases would be useful.

“Specifics around words and phrases to listen out for, and having a refreshed training offer to raise awareness of key ‘Prevent’ issues, would be directly helpful, for example,” Rose explains.

Michael also worries that the list provided in the proposed update isn’t as useful as it could be because it doesn’t include warning signs for issues that he feels school staff need more education on.

“The problem with the list is that it is so broad that it covers a range of concerns,” he explains.

“So when we have specific issues, for example incels, this would be classed as a Prevent safeguarding risk - but how many know to flag a student suddenly using more misogynistic language as a Prevent concern?”

5. ‘Peer-on-peer abuse’ replaced with ‘child-on-child abuse’

The term “peer-on-peer abuse” no longer appears in the proposed new version of the KCSIE document, and has instead been replaced with the term “child-on-child abuse”.

This may seem a small change but legal expert Bevan says it is important because it improves the “usefulness” of the document and brings more clarity to what schools must tackle.

“The change to ‘child-on-child’ is an improvement on the language and allows for more clarity,” he says.

“Previously, where both terms were used, it could be confusing - could peer-on-peer refer to two adults, for example? This makes it explicitly clear it refers to children.”

Furthermore, content from the Department for Education document Sexual violence and sexual harassment between children in schools and colleges, last updated in September 2021, has also been moved across into part five of the KCSIE document: “Child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment”.

Previously, this was an advice document for governors, senior leaders and designated safeguarding leads, but by moving it into KCSIE it now means it is part of the statutory guidance.

In the proposal, it says they have moved this content to give it the “additional information the prominence it deserves in [the] main body of the guidance”.

Rose welcomes this change because it “streamlines” access to this information, making it easier for all involved in safeguarding to access and understand.

“Much of 2021’s part 5 is included or duplicated within the document anyway, so adding it to the guidance itself makes it easier to use and keeps information all in one place,” she says.

The consultation on the document is open until 8 March and can be accessed here.