The Department for Education has published Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance for 2025, after school safeguarding leads had raised concerns about the delay to publication.
The DfE said last week that there would only be technical changes to KCSIE for 2025, and therefore most of the changes are relatively minor.
Under the previous government, a consultation was launched that was supposed to inform the content of KCSIE 2025 with wider changes.
Last week the DfE said the guidance will be revised and improved regularly, and future iterations will reflect progress on developments like the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the strategy to tackle violence against women and girls.
The latest changes to KCSIE guidance
These are the technical changes to KCSIE to be aware of for September 2025.
1. Guidance to be signposted later on
In KCSIE 2025, the DfE has confirmed that it “expects” to publish revised guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and gender questioning children this summer.
“If published, we will signpost to this guidance in September 2025,” KCSIE states.
2. Updated list of safeguarding harms
The DfE has also updated the list of online safeguarding harms from 2024 to include misinformation, disinformation (including fake news) and conspiracy theories.
As in the previous year, KCSIE states that it is “essential that children are safeguarded from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material”.
Almost all respondents to Tes’ safeguarding survey this year said monitoring pupils’ online behaviour outside of school was their biggest challenge. They were more likely to say this than in 2024.
3. Statutory attendance guidance
KCSIE 2025 has an update noting that the Working Together to Improve School Attendance guidance is statutory, which was not specified in KCSIE 2024.
The attendance guidance was updated in 2024 to apply from August that year, and made statutory.
This has now been clarified to reflect changes in the law on school attendance and admissions registers, and the setting out of a national framework for penalty notices. Every state school is now required to share daily attendance registers with the DfE.
4. The role of virtual school heads
KCSIE 2025 has been updated to include the extensions of the roles of virtual school heads in September 2024.
The role now includes a non-statutory responsibility to promote the educational achievement of all children in kinship care.
Non-statutory responsibilities for virtual school heads were previously expanded in 2021 to include oversight of attendance, attainment and progress of children with a social worker.
5. Alternative provision guidance clarified
KCSIE 2025 also includes updates to reflect existing guidance on alternative provision.
KCSIE 2025 states: “Schools should obtain written information from the alternative provider that appropriate safeguarding checks have been carried out on individuals working at their establishment (i.e., those checks that schools would otherwise perform on their own staff).
“This includes written confirmation that the alternative provider will inform the commissioning school of any arrangements that may put the child at risk (i.e., staff changes), so that the commissioning school can ensure itself that appropriate safeguarding checks have been carried out on new staff.”
It adds that schools should always know where a child is based during school hours, including having records of the address of the AP and any satellite sites that a child may attend.
Reviews of the placement should be frequent enough to have reassurance that the child is regularly attending and the placement is safe and meets the child’s needs, KCSIE adds.
If a safeguarding concern arises, the placement should be immediately reviewed and terminated if necessary, the 2025 guidance adds.
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