language: en · last checked: 2026-09-06

KCSIE 2026 — Online safety (paragraphs 164–183)

Keeping children safe in education 2026 (Department for Education statutory guidance — schools and colleges must have regard to it). Reproduced below: the Online safety chapter, paragraphs 164–183.

Online safety

It is essential that children are safeguarded from potentially harmful and inappropriate online material. An effective whole school and college approach to online safety empowers a school or college to protect and educate pupils, students, and staff in their use of technology and establishes mechanisms to identify, intervene in, and escalate any concerns where appropriate.

The breadth of issues classified within online safety is considerable and ever evolving, but can be categorised into four areas of risk: content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate, or harmful content, for example: pornography, racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicide, antisemitism, radicalisation, extremism, extreme sexual or physical violence, misinformation, disinformation (including fake news) and conspiracy theories, contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users or generative AI applications that simulate this; for example: peer-to-peer pressure, commercial advertising and adults posing as children or young adults with the intention to groom or exploit them for sexual, criminal, financial or other purposes, conduct: online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes, harm; for example, making, sending and receiving explicit images, including those generated using AI and online bullying, and commerce: risks such as online gambling, inappropriate advertising, phishing and or financial scams. If you feel your pupils, students or staff are at risk, please report it to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (https://apwg.org/).

Governing bodies and proprietors should ensure online safety is a running and interrelated theme whilst devising and implementing their whole school or college approach to safeguarding and related policies and procedures. This will include considering how online safety is reflected as required in all relevant policies and considering online safety whilst planning the curriculum, any teacher training, the role and responsibilities of the designated safeguarding lead (and deputies) and any parental engagement.

Guidance to support schools and colleges to understand safety considerations and legal responsibilities if they choose to use Generative AI (either teacher-facing or pupil-facing) can be found at Generative artificial intelligence in education.

To complement this, the department, in partnership with the Chiltern Learning Trust and Chartered College of Teaching, have published online resources to help school and college staff to use AI safely and effectively. Module 3 provides important information on identifying and mitigating key risks associated with safeguarding, ethics, data protection, and intellectual property.

Online safety policy

Online safety and the school or college’s approach to it should be reflected in the child protection policy which, amongst other things, should include appropriate filtering and monitoring on school devices and school networks. Considering the 4Cs (above) will provide the basis of an effective online policy.

Mobile phone policy

All schools should be mobile phone-free environments by default; anything other than this should be by exception only. Statutory guidance on Mobile phones in schools is clear that the department expects schools to implement a policy whereby pupils do not have access to their mobile phone throughout the school day including during lessons, the time between lessons, breaktimes and lunchtime. There are a number of ways in which schools can ensure that they are mobile phone-free, and it is for headteachers to decide how best to achieve this within their own unique contexts. Examples of how schools have become mobile free are available from Creating a mobile phone-free environment: school case studies.

Remote education

Guidance to support schools and colleges understand how to help keep pupils, students and staff safe whilst learning remotely can be found at Safeguarding and remote education - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) and Providing remote education: guidance for schools - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Schools and colleges are likely to be in regular contact with parents and carers. These communications should be used to reinforce the importance of children being safe online and parents and carers are likely to find it helpful to understand what systems schools and colleges use to filter and monitor online use. It will be especially important for parents and carers to be aware of what their children are being asked to do online, including the sites they will be asked to access and be clear who from the school or college (if anyone) their child is going to be interacting with online.

Filtering and monitoring

Whilst considering their responsibility to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and provide them with a safe environment in which to learn, governing bodies and proprietors should be doing all that they reasonably can to limit children’s exposure to the above risks from the school or college’s IT system. As part of this process, governing bodies and proprietors should ensure their school or college has appropriate filtering and monitoring systems in place and ensure that a review of their effectiveness is carried out at least once every academic year. Reviews should be carried out by the SLT member responsible for filtering and monitoring, with the support of the school’s designated safeguarding lead and IT support. They should include checks that filtering is working appropriately on all internet-connected devices in all relevant locations, and a record should be kept of these checks. They should ensure that the leadership team and relevant staff have an awareness and understanding of the provisions in place and manage them effectively and know how to escalate concerns when identified. Governing bodies and proprietors should consider the number of and age range of their children, those who are potentially at greater risk of harm and how often they access the IT system along with the proportionality of costs versus safeguarding risks.

The appropriateness of any filtering and monitoring systems are a matter for individual schools and colleges and will be informed in part, by the risk assessment required by the Prevent Duty. 42

The department’s filtering and monitoring standards provide more detailed guidance. They set out that schools and colleges should:

identify and assign roles and responsibilities to manage filtering and monitoring systems,
review filtering and monitoring provision at least annually,
block harmful and inappropriate content without unreasonably impacting teaching and learning, and
have effective monitoring strategies in place that meet their safeguarding needs.

Schools can use the department’s ‘Plan technology for your school service’ to self-assess against the filtering and monitoring standards and receive personalised recommendations on how to meet them.

Governing bodies and proprietors should review the standards and discuss with IT staff and service providers what more needs to be done to support schools and colleges in meeting this standard. Additional guidance on “appropriate” filtering and monitoring can be found at:

42 The Prevent duty Departmental advice for schools and childcare providers and Home Office Statutory guidance: Prevent duty guidance.

UK Safer Internet Centre: A Guide for education settings and filtering providers. The UK Safer Internet Centre produced a series of webinars for teachers on behalf of the department. These webinars were designed to inform and support schools with their filtering and monitoring responsibilities and can be assessed at Filtering and monitoring webinars available – UK Safer Internet Centre,
South West Grid for Learning (swgfl.org.uk) has created a tool to check whether a school or college’s filtering provider is signed up to relevant lists (CSA content, Sexual Content, Terrorist content, Your Internet Connection Blocks Child Abuse & Terrorist Content),
Support for schools when considering what to buy and how to buy it is available via the: Schools’ buying strategy with specific advice on procurement here: Buying for schools, and
The department has published Generative AI: product safety expectations to support schools to use generative artificial intelligence safely and explains how filtering and monitoring requirements apply to the use of generative AI in education.

Information security and access management

Governing bodies and proprietors should take measures to safeguard children by protecting personal information and ensuring their school or college has appropriate cyber security systems in place. This should be approached as part of the school or college’s wider safeguarding responsibilities. As part of this, schools and colleges should consider implementing measures in line with the Cyber security standards for schools and colleges.

The Cyber security standards for schools and colleges outline actions that schools and colleges should consider implementing to strengthen resilience, reduce the risk of disruption, prevent data breaches, and mitigate safeguarding risks.

Guidance on e-security is available from the National Education Network, and broader cyber security advice, including resources for governors and trustees, can be found at National Cyber Security Centre – NCSC. The department’s ‘plan technology for your school service’ supports schools in meeting digital standards through self-assessment and personalised recommendations.

Reviewing online safety

Technology, and risks and harms related to it, evolve, and change rapidly. Schools and colleges should consider carrying out an annual review of their approach to online safety, supported by an annual risk assessment that considers and reflects the risks their children face. A free online safety self-review tool for schools can be found via the 360 safe website or LGfL online safety audit.

UKCIS has published Online safety in schools and colleges: questions from the governing board. The questions can be used to gain a basic understanding of the current approach to keeping children safe online; learn how to improve this approach where appropriate; and find out about tools which can be used to improve the approach. It has also published an Online Safety Audit Tool which helps mentors of trainee teachers and newly qualified teachers induct mentees and provide ongoing support, development and monitoring.

When reviewing online safety provision, the UKCIS external visitors guidance highlights a range of resources which can support educational settings to develop a whole school approach towards online safety.