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Consultation on Amendments to KCSIE

on Friday, 19 March 2021.

The Department for Education (DfE) has launched a consultation on further changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE). The consultation was launched on 10 December 2020 and closed on 4 March 2021.

The DfE states that the consultation takes place "with a view to making changes for September 2021".

The DfE consulted on many of the proposed changes when it launched a consultation on KCSIE in February 2020. That consultation was withdrawn in March 2020 due to the coronavirus outbreak. This is in effect a partial 'relaunch' of the 2020 consultation. Any responses submitted in 2020 will be considered by the DfE and schools will be able to submit any new/supplementary comments as part of the current consultation.

There are no proposed changes to the statutory requirements for safer recruitment. However, Part 3 of the consultation version of KCSIE has been divided it into four sections:

  • Recruitment and selection process   
  • Pre-employment vetting checks, regulated activity and recording of information
  • Other checks that may be necessary for staff volunteers and others
  • How to ensure the ongoing safeguarding of children and the statutory reporting duties on employers

The proposed changes may be familiar to schools as they reflect the approach contained in the statutory guidance that was in force between 2007 and 2014, Safeguarding children and safer recruitment in education (SCSRE). In particular, the consultation version contains much more detail on how the recruitment process should be conducted. We recommend that schools take the time to read the consultation version so that they are prepared for these changes, should they come into force.

We have continued to advocate that SCSRE contains valuable and relevant content and we therefore retained much of it in our Safer Recruitment Pack documentation as a matter of best practice, even when KCSIE took a more minimalist approach. Schools who have been using the documents in our Safer Recruitment Pack and who have attended our Safer Recruitment Training should therefore be familiar with the change of emphasis in the consultation version of KCSIE. We will report on the outcome of the consultation once it is published.


If you have any questions on the KCSIE consultation, please contact Richard Hewitt (07909 642718) or Simon Bevan (07980 828004) in our Independent Schools team, or complete the form below.

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