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Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE): September 2026 changes

KCSIE has been published for the 2026/27 academic year. Understand the changes and what your next steps should be.

Updated
on 2 September 2026See updates
School types: All•School phases: All•Ref: 41784
Contents
  1. Part 1: safeguarding information for all staff
  2. Part 2: the management of safeguarding 
  3. Part 3: safer recruitment
  4. Part 4: safeguarding concerns or allegations made about staff, including supply teachers, trainee teachers, volunteers and contractors
  5. Part 5: child-on-child sexual harassment and sexual violence
  6. Annex A: further information
  7. Annex B: role of the designated safeguarding lead 
  8. Annex C: KCSIE 2026: summary of changes
  9. Next steps 

The Department for Education (DfE) has published its final version of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2026, which came into force on 1 September 2026. 

This article summarises the main changes between KCSIE 2025 and 2026. For a summary of the whole KCSIE 2026 document, see our other article.

Substantial changes between KCSIE 2025 and 2026

The 2026 version of KCSIE has new sections and updated terminology throughout. While we've summarised the key changes in this article, it's not exhaustive – we've provided paragraph numbers throughout, so that you can easily navigate to the relevant sections of the guidance to read the details in full. 

There are some additional changes in the final version of KCSIE published on 1 September 2026 (compared to the July 2026 version). We've added those changes in bold throughout our summary of changes to help you understand what's changed from the previous