Keeping Children Safe in Education 2025: updated guidance published

The updated Keeping children safe in education 2025 statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England has now been published. You must have regard to it when carrying out your duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. 

It is for information only at the moment, pending publication of the final version which comes into force in September 2025. It replaces the Keeping children safe in education 2024, which you can read more about here. 

What is in the guidance? 

It sets out safeguarding information, explaining what you should know and do. It details the law and your legal obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty. The statutory guidance also covers safer recruitment such as the information to include in job adverts, and it also sets out how to handle safeguarding concerns or allegations made about staff, including supply teachers, volunteers and contractors. 

What has changed? 

Annex F sets out how the updated statutory guidance has changed from the previous 2024 version. 

No changes have been made to part one (safeguarding information for all staff) but changes to part two (the management of safeguarding) include the following: 

• Paragraph 135: updated to clarify misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories are safeguarding harms. 
• Paragraph 142: link added to the plan technology for your school service, which schools can use to assess themselves against the filtering and monitoring standards and receive personalised recommendations on how to meet them.
• Paragraph 143: link added to Department for Education guidance on the use of generative AI in education (2025) at the end of the filtering and monitoring section to support schools and colleges. 
• Paragraph 144: wording amended in the cybersecurity standards for schools and colleges advice to clarify that it was developed to help schools improve their cyber resilience. 
• Paragraphs 169 - 170: information added that clarifies and reflects existing Alternative Provision (AP) Guidance. 
• Paragraph 177: updated to clarify ‘working together to safeguard attendance’ is now ‘statutory guidance’. 
• Paragraph 199: has been amended to clarify that the role of the virtual head has been extended to include responsibility for promoting the educational achievement of children in kinship care. 
• Paragraph 204: a note has been added to say that it is expected that the revised guidance on gender questioning children will be published this summer. If published, it will signpost to this guidance in September 2025. 
• Paragraph 205: removal of ‘spectrum’ and ‘disorder’ to align with the SEND code of practice. 

In part three - ‘Safer recruitment’ - various links have been updated and at paragraph 331 information has been added that clarifies and reflects existing alternative provision guidance. The title of the Information Commissioner's employment practice guidance has been corrected at paragraph 422 in part four of the guidance, ‘Safeguarding concerns or allegations made about staff, including supply teachers, volunteers and contractors’. Further links have also been added to part five of the guidance ‘Child-on-child sexual violence and sexual harassment’ and in Annex B. 

The guidance explains that while these are only technical changes, future versions of the guidance will reflect the progress into law of the Children's and Schools Bill, the emerging further learnings from the work of the recent Casey Audit and subsequent inquiries, and the Violence Against Women and Girls strategy. 

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