Safeguarding Children in Schools and Colleges: A Call for Evidence

Overview

Safeguarding is one of the most important responsibilities that schools and colleges have, and we know how seriously teachers, designated safeguarding leads, support staff, and school and college leadership take that responsibility.

Safeguarding is never static. As new safeguarding threats emerge, we all need to consider how we can best respond to those threats and what solutions can be put in place to address them. This call for evidence is therefore deliberately broad and seeks to reflect areas and issues that have been shared by school and college safeguarding professionals, or where wider systemic changes mean we have an opportunity to better align school and college safeguarding policy, including the findings of Ofsted's ‘Big Listen.’

Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) is designed to help schools and colleges identify concerns early, develop the right relationships with other professionals, and support them to put appropriate processes and procedures in place. Ministers have decided that KCSIE 2024 will undergo technical changes only before final publication in September 2024, with a view to providing a more substantively updated document, encompassing wider changes, to be delivered in 2025.

Why your views matter

We are launching this 12-week call for evidence now, to take the views of schools, colleges, and other professionals on safeguarding practice development and direction, in advance of Keeping children safe in education 2025 (KCSIE). Your reflections, experience, and suggestions in this call for evidence will help us to inform future iterations of KCSIE and shape our long-term policies to support staff to keep children safe in education. For this reason – whilst we will not be publishing the results of this call for evidence, we will consult on any substantive changes we make to future iterations of KCSIE, and school and college safeguarding policy, following this exercise, in the normal way.

What happens next

Your reflections, experience, and suggestions in this call for evidence will help us to inform future iterations of Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) and shape our long-term policies to support staff to keep children safe in education. For this reason – whilst we will not be publishing the results of this call for evidence, we will consult on any substantive changes we make to future iterations of KCSIE, and school and college safeguarding policy, following this exercise, in the normal way.