EdLaw
England — Generative AI: product safety standards (Department for Education)
The Department for Education's standards for generative AI products used in schools and colleges. In the page's words they "outline the capabilities and features that generative artificial intelligence (AI) products and systems should meet to be considered safe for users in educational settings" and "are mainly intended for edtech developers and suppliers to schools and colleges" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md). Reproduced in full: stated purpose, use cases, filtering, monitoring and reporting, security, privacy, intellectual property, design and testing, governance, and the four harm areas added in January 2026 (cognitive development, emotional and social development, mental health, manipulation).
First published on 22 January 2025 as Generative AI: product safety expectations; it is now titled "standards" (last updated 19 January 2026), and the old publication URL redirects to it (checked 2026-10-12). KCSIE 2026 still calls it by the earlier title in the list after paragraph 177, and the DfE filtering and monitoring standard refers to it as "Generative AI: product safety standards" (FILTERING-AND-MONITORING.md).
Applicability to EdTech
The document is addressed to suppliers, and its Monitoring and reporting standard answers the routing question directly — who receives a safeguarding alert from a learner-facing AI product:
- The institution's DSL, captured at setup and kept current. Products are expected to "identify and alert local supervisors of disclosures that indicate a possible safeguarding issue" and to "maintain current contact details of an institution’s safeguarding lead by" "requiring the institution to input the contact details of its Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), or equivalent authority, during initial setup", "confirming the safeguarding lead’s contact details before activation", "using the safeguarding contact details to send any high-risk alerts to the responsible person within an agreed timescale" and "allowing institutions to update safeguarding contacts easily" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md#our-standards-1). The text names one contact ("its Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), or equivalent authority"); it says nothing about deputies, and it leaves the timescale to be agreed rather than fixing one.
- Other alert routes in the same document. Under Emotional and social development, products should "notify the DSL of worrying patterns or repeated disclosures that suggest relationship formation, emotional dependence or potential safeguarding concerns" and flag "concerning cases for teacher or safeguarding review" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md#our-standards-8). Under Mental health, the tiered response to detected distress includes "raising a safeguarding flag to the institution’s safeguarding lead" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md#our-standards-9). Harmful-content events go to "local supervisors" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md#our-standards-1).
- Record-keeping. "The generative AI product must maintain robust activity logging procedures", including "recording input prompts and responses" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md#monitoring-and-reporting); and products should "protect privacy and only store the minimum data that is necessary for monitoring and safeguarding, restrict access to authorised staff, and do not use information collected for any other purpose" (PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md#our-standards-8).
What the DSL is, and the school's own duties about deputies and availability, are in KCSIE (DESIGNATED-SAFEGUARDING-LEAD.md).
Contents
| Document | Covers |
|---|---|
| PRODUCT-SAFETY-STANDARDS.md | The standards in full |
Enforcement
None directly. The standards are expectations of suppliers; they reach a supplier through schools' procurement, and the filtering and monitoring standard directs schools introducing generative AI products to refer to them.
Licence
The corpus reproduces the standards from their gov.uk page. The page's own notice (read 2026-10-12 on the standards page) says: "© Crown copyright 2026 This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated." and "Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned." The page identifies no third-party copyright material.
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: the document names the DfE standards, their page version and their 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 layout, the links reduced to text and the anchors are described in Meta.
- Exemptions: no personal data, logos, crests or Royal Arms are reproduced.
Related
- KCSIE — the statutory guidance that defines the DSL these standards route alerts to
- DfE digital & technology standards — the filtering and monitoring standard that points schools at these standards
- UK Children's Code — cited by the standards' monitoring section
- EU AI Act — the EU's binding AI regime, for comparison