Keeping Children Safe in Education

Keeping Children Safe in Education downloads below - you can also access our FREE audit tool and a knowledge & understanding check to ensure it's in practice in your school.

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Ensure you access the right resource for your role…

Part 1 & Annex A

All staff in schools and colleges must read part 1 of the guidance. School and college leaders and those staff who work directly with children should also read annex A in this document. Click here to download

Full Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance

Head teachers, proprietors, governors, the designated safeguarding lead and deputies must read the whole of Keeping Children Safe in Education. Click here to download

Keeping Children Safe in Education Audit

Use our FREE online audit tool to check your school is compliant with the 51 changes in the new Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance. Click here to launch the audit

safeguarding network can keep you up to date with changes to safeguarding in schools, news & research together with our latest auditing and training tools. Add your details for free updates & we’ll drop you a line.

Changes in 2018

The Department for Education have added quite a few sections to Keeping Children Safe in Education this year. A summary of the changes can be found at the bottom of the page, along with a link to the new document.

We’ve produced an audit tool you can try for free. We’re hoping you’ll like it and join Safeguarding Network, with access to learning materials to support delivery of all areas of Keeping Children Safe in Education, audit tools to support your Designated Safeguarding Lead and test practice in your school, and a forum to ask questions and keep you up to date with changes in the safeguarding world.

You’ll need to evidence that all your staff have read, understood and can apply the new guidance. Members can access our online knowledge check which provides your school with regular reports on who has read the guidance, whether they understand it and tests whether they can apply it against scenarios they may experience in school. See below.

Front cover of Keeping Children Safe in Education 2018

Evidencing change

There are 51 areas in the new Keeping Children Safe in Education where updates may affect your school. Our free audit tool takes you through all the changes with suggested actions.

Mark each area complete, partially complete or incomplete
If you wish, where you are already compliant add evidence of what you’ve done for the final report – useful to send to governors or hold on file for the regulator about action you’ve taken.
Where there are outstanding actions, these can be added to our SMART action format for the report and action plan.

See sample pages from the report

Image of first page of Safeguarding Network's KSCiE audit tool on a computer screen

All the changes are set out in Annex H of the new document. The main changes include:

reflecting the wider changes from Local Safeguarding Children Boards to safeguarding partnerships;
clarity around when staff should be talking to the DSL, information sharing, links to sexual violence & sexual harassment guidance;
needing more than one emergency contact number for families (where reasonably possible);
updates on designated safeguarding lead responsibilities, and those of the deputies;
new information on children missing education, children involved in the court system, children with family members in prison, county lines, domestic abuse, homelessness, so called “Honour-Based” Violence and peer on peer abuse;
update on DBS checks on host families for foreign exchange students (homestay).

The new Keeping Children Safe in Education can be accessed here.

Knowledge check

Ensuring each member of staff has read Keeping Children Safe in Education can take up a lot of time. Register your staff team with Safeguarding Network and they’ll receive a link to the guidance and reminders to read the relevant sections every week until they have completed the knowledge check. The check also asks them how they would respond to a variety of situations in Part 1 of the guidance, checks they can apply the knowledge they have gained and asks that they have read the school policies specified in the guidance (child protection, behaviour, code of conduct and whistleblowing). The tool is online and can be completed at school or at home. It will be available throughout the year for any new members of staff who join. Staff receive a certificate online on completion.

Safeguarding Network members schools receive a weekly report on staff completion through September and October, monthly reports thereafter. Membership brings access to all our resources and briefing sessions for staff on the areas in Annex A and throughout the rest of the guidance. You’ll also receive audit tools, action plans and policy templates together with access to our network of Designated Safeguarding Leads from across the country through our online forums for just £99 per term.

The Knowledge Check is 99p per person for Safeguarding Network members and £5 per person for non-members.

Join today, then enable access to the knowledge and understanding check from your elearning control panel.

If you don’t want to join Safeguarding Network but wish to complete the check, contact us.