EdLaw
England — DfE digital and technology standards for schools and colleges
The DfE's standards that KCSIE directs governing bodies to. Curated here in full: the filtering and monitoring core standard and the cyber security core standard — the two sets that generate vendor requirements. (The wider suite — broadband, wireless, cloud, devices, accessibility — is linked from the same guidance collection.)
Applicability to EdTech
- Filtering and monitoring (FILTERING-AND-MONITORING.md): roles assigned, provision reviewed at least annually, harmful content blocked without unreasonably impacting teaching, and effective monitoring strategies. Vendor consequences: headsets and the platform must work under school filtering; expect "does your service support our monitoring strategy?" questions.
- Cyber security (CYBER-SECURITY.md): annual risk assessment reviewed termly, cyber awareness plans, anti-malware/firewall, account and access-privilege controls (MFA for cloud services), licensing/patching, backup plans, and attack reporting. These flow into due-diligence questionnaires for cloud vendors serving English schools — our SOC 2 mapping should reference them.
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| FILTERING-AND-MONITORING.md | The filtering and monitoring core standard, in full |
| CYBER-SECURITY.md | The cyber security core standard, in full |
Enforcement
Non-statutory in themselves but enforced through KCSIE ("must have regard") and Ofsted inspection of safeguarding effectiveness.
Licence
The corpus reproduces the DfE digital and technology standards from their gov.uk guidance pages. The gov.uk footer (read 2026-10-01 on the cyber security standards page) says: "All content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0, except where otherwise stated" and "© Crown copyright". The pages state no other terms for the standard text.
The Open Government Licence v3.0 (read 2026-10-01) says: "You are free to: copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information; adapt the Information; exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially". Its conditions: "acknowledge the source of the Information in your product or application by including or linking to any attribution statement specified by the Information Provider(s) and, where possible, provide a link to this licence", and, where no statement is specified, "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0."; and, under Non-endorsement, the licence "does not grant you any right to use the Information in a way that suggests any official status or that the Information Provider and/or Licensor endorse you or your use of the Information."
Conditions, and how this corpus meets them:
- Acknowledge the source: each document names the DfE guidance, its page version and its gov.uk URL, and Sources links the publication. Attribution statement: "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0." (licence).
- Non-endorsement: the corpus does not claim official status or endorsement by the Department for Education.
- Changes: the OGL does not require changes to be marked; the selection, layout and added anchors are described in Meta.
- Exemptions: no personal data, logos, crests or Royal Arms are reproduced.
Related
- KCSIE — points schools at these standards
- SOC 2 — our evidence artefact for the cyber standard
- US CISA CPG — the US voluntary sibling