language: en · status: in-force · last checked: 2026-09-06

England — Keeping children safe in education 2026 (online safety chapter)

The DfE's statutory safeguarding guidance for schools and colleges in England — re-issued annually (2026 edition current). Schools "must have regard" to it; Ofsted inspects against it. Curated here: the Online safety chapter (paragraphs 164–183), the part that reaches EdTech vendors through school procurement and configuration demands.

Applicability to EdTech

• Filtering and monitoring (paras 173–177): governors must ensure appropriate filtering/monitoring with an annual effectiveness review on all internet-connected devices; the DfE filtering and monitoring standards (roles assigned, annual review, harmful-content blocking without unreasonably impacting teaching, monitoring strategies) are the checklist schools apply — headsets on the school network are in scope, and "does your platform work with our filtering?" is a KCSIE-driven question.
• Information security / cyber security (paras 178–180): schools are pointed at the DfE Cyber security standards — flowing into vendor due-diligence questionnaires.
• Generative AI: filtering and monitoring requirements expressly apply to generative AI use, and the DfE's Generative AI: product safety expectations are referenced (para 177) — any AI feature offered to English schools should map against those expectations.
• Remote education (para 172 area) and the whole-school online-safety policy (para 169) frame how platforms are used; the 4-category risk framing (content/contact/conduct/commerce) is in para 165.

Contents

Scope note: Parts 1–5 (safeguarding roles, allegations, SRE) matter to schools, not vendors — not extracted. The referenced DfE digital standards are TODO item 33.

Enforcement

Ofsted / ISI inspection; DfE intervention powers. Not directly enforceable against vendors — it reaches us contractually.

Related

• DfE digital & technology standards (TODO item 33) — the standards KCSIE points at
• UK Prevent duty (TODO item 36) — drives the filtering risk assessment

Sources

• gov.uk — Keeping children safe in education

Meta

Guidance text in ONLINE-SAFETY.md is reproduced verbatim from the DfE KCSIE 2026 PDF by tools/gov-uk/build_kcsie.py; the publication page's linked PDF URL is pinned, so verify fails when a new edition or in-year update is published. Page-bottom footnotes are kept in place, italicised.