On 7th July 2026, the Department for Education (DfE) released the statutory safeguarding guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2026, which comes into force on 1 September 2026.
The new statutory guidance applies to all maintained special schools, special academies, non-maintained special schools, special post-16 institutions and special independent schools (special schools). Schools must have regard to this guidance when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (everyone under the age of 18).
This briefing focuses on some of the key changes and the practical implications for NASS members and how these changes should be reflected in safeguarding policies, staff training and practice across specialist settings.
Part One – Safeguarding information for all staff (Pages 8-27)
A key structural change in KCSIE 2026 is the replacement of Annex A, which previously provided a condensed safeguarding summary for non-teaching staff. The DfE now expects all staff, regardless of role, to read and understand Part One. For NASS members, this means that all multidisciplinary staff, including teachers, care staff, residential staff, therapists, drivers, agency staff and other adults supporting learners, must understand their safeguarding responsibilities. Special schools should therefore consider how staff with different roles, experience and training needs will be supported to understand and apply Part One in practice.
Mental health as a safeguarding issue (Pages 18-19)
KCSIE 2026 gives greater prominence to mental health, recognising that mental health concerns can themselves become safeguarding concerns. This is particularly relevant for NASS members, where many learners have overlapping communication, emotional regulation and mental health needs, and where changes in presentation may be subtle, non-verbal or misattributed to a disability.
Education staff are well placed to recognise potential warning signs, including significant changes in behaviour, ongoing difficulties with sleep, withdrawal from social situations, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, self-harm, self-neglect or emerging contemplations of suicide. As emphasised in the guidance, only appropriately trained professionals should attempt to make a diagnosis of a mental health problem.
Where concerns about a child’s mental health also raise safeguarding concerns, staff should follow child protection procedures and seek support without delay, recognising that early identification and intervention can be critical in preventing harm.
Serious Violence (Pages 19-20)
This section of Part One has been substantially updated and expanded to reflect the continuing safeguarding concern posed by serious violence and exploitation. The guidance highlights further risks associated with weapons, peer conflict, bullying and criminal exploitation, alongside the heightened risks for children with disrupted education, including those who have been suspended, permanently excluded or educated in alternative provision. Other identified risk factors in the Home Office’s Serious Violence Strategy include impulsivity, aggression, low self-esteem and head injury.
For special schools, this should be considered alongside the increased vulnerability of many learners with SEND to coercion, manipulation, exploitation and unsafe peer relationships. Difficulties with communication, social understanding, recognising risk, forming healthy relationships and reporting concerns can make some learners more susceptible to harm.
DSLs should ensure that risk assessments, behaviour support plans and multi-disciplinary approach consider exploitation risk, particularly where a learner has experienced disrupted placements, exclusions, transport concerns or unsafe online contact.
Artificial intelligence, deepfakes and online safety (Pages 24-27)
KCSIE 2026 introduces explicit references to artificial intelligence as a safeguarding risk for the first time. The definition of making or sharing nudes and semi-nudes now expressly covers images digitally altered or wholly generated using AI, including content sometimes described as deepfakes or “deep nudes”. The guidance also introduces the “4Cs” framework for categorising online risk (content, contact, conduct and commerce) with generative AI named as a category of risk within that framework. New content directs schools to the DfE’s Generative AI: product safety expectations guidance, which explains how filtering and monitoring requirements apply to the use of generative AI in education.
For special schools, these changes are particularly important. Learners with SEND may be especially vulnerable to AI-generated exploitation, sextortion or manipulation online, and may have difficulty understanding consent, coercion or the nature of AI-generated imagery. Special schools that use AI-assisted learning tools or communication platforms should also consider the data protection and safeguarding implications of those tools in light of the updated guidance. DSLs should ensure that online safety policies, filtering and monitoring arrangements and staff training address AI-related risks in a way that reflects the communication needs and vulnerabilities of their learners.
The Designated Safeguarding Lead - cover and safeguarding systems (Page 36-37)
This section strengthens expectations around cover when the DSL is unavailable. The guidance suggests the use of a confidential shared mailbox or equivalent system to allow concerns to be received, monitored and acted on without delay. Special schools may need to plan carefully to ensure there is always suitable leadership available with the appropriate status, authority, skills and experience to lead on safeguarding and child protection in its setting.
Reasonable force and restrictive intervention (Pages 53-54)
The updated section on reasonable force now aligns with the separate statutory guidance on the use of restrictive interventions and is likely to be of particular significance to NASS members. Special schools should review policies and practice to ensure that approaches to restrictive intervention are embedded within a wider safeguarding framework rather than viewed solely as behaviour support measures.
Policies should make clear that, whilst appropriate physical contact may sometimes be necessary to prevent harm, any use of force or restrictive intervention must be lawful, necessary, proportionate, recorded, reviewed and delivered by appropriately trained staff.
Schools should also recognise the increased vulnerability of many learners with SEND, mental health needs or medical conditions, take account of their duties under the Equality Act 2010, including reasonable adjustments and the Public Sector Equality Duty, and promote positive, proactive and individualised behaviour support in partnership with families to reduce the need for restrictive intervention wherever possible.
Changes to regulated activity and safer recruitment (Pages 81-103)
The safer recruitment section of KCSIE 2026 has been substantially rewritten following changes made by the Crime and Policing Act 2026, which removed the “supervision exemption” from the definition of regulated activity. From 1 September 2026, any person volunteering in a school in a role that involves teaching, training, instructing, caring for or supervising children on more than three days in a 30-day period, or overnight, is now in regulated activity. All volunteers engaging in regulated activity will need to have an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check with children’s barred list information. The previous annex on supervision of regulated activity has been removed.
This change is of significant practical importance for NASS members, who may rely on volunteers including parent helpers, charity supporters, therapy volunteers and community visitors to support their programmes. Special schools with residential provision will be especially affected, given the overnight threshold. NASS members should audit their current volunteer arrangements as a matter of urgency to identify any individuals who will now require enhanced DBS checks and ensure that appropriate checks are in place before 1 September 2026. The guidance also includes a new example single central record (SCR) template that meets the statutory requirements of KCSIE, which schools may wish to adopt.
Mobile phone policy (Pages 54-55)
KCSIE 2026 includes a new section reflecting the DfE’s guidance on mobile phones in schools. The expectation is that schools implement policies under which pupils do not have access to their phones throughout the school day, including lessons, time between lessons, breaktimes and lunchtime, with headteachers deciding how to achieve this in their own contexts.
For special schools, the application of a mobile-phone-free policy will require careful consideration. Some pupils may use personal devices as communication aids, assistive technology or sensory regulation tools. Confiscation or removal of devices may also present behavioural, sensory or wellbeing challenges for particular learners. NASS members should ensure that any mobile phone policy includes appropriate reasonable adjustments for learners with SEND and distinguishes clearly between personal mobile phones and devices used for communication, learning or medical purposes.
Data protection and information sharing
Data protection references throughout KCSIE 2026 have been updated to reflect the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, effective from January 2026. The guidance restates that data protection law should never prevent information sharing for the purposes of keeping children safe. For NASS members, given the multi-agency nature of many special school placements involving health, social care, local authorities and commissioning bodies these updated information-sharing expectations are relevant. Staff should be confident that safeguarding concerns can and should be shared promptly with relevant professionals, and that data protection obligations do not present a barrier to doing so.
Early Help and Family Help
KCSIE 2026 distinguishes between community-based Early Help (universal services) and targeted early help through multi-disciplinary Family Help teams, aligning the guidance with broader government reforms to children’s social care. Many NASS members will interact with Family Help teams and local authority early help services as part of the safeguarding pathway for their learners. Staff should understand the revised terminology and referral routes to ensure that concerns are directed to the appropriate service without delay.
Children who are questioning their gender (Pages 64-70)
The revised section of guidance has been introduced against the wider legal backdrop of the UK Supreme Court’s ruling in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] UKSC 16 on the meaning of “sex” in the Equality Act 2010, which held that references to sex, woman and man in that Act are to biological sex. The guidance is intended to give schools a clearer safeguarding framework for responding to children who are questioning their gender, including requests relating to names, pronouns, uniform, facilities, sport, trips and residential arrangements.
This section is particularly important for NASS members as many special schools support children with complex educational, health, care, communication and mental health needs. Requests relating to a child questioning their gender may therefore raise safeguarding, SEND, clinical, therapeutic, residential, staffing and family considerations which cannot be addressed through a generic school policy alone. It is important for NASS members to ensure that leaders, DSLs, teachers, therapists, care staff, residential staff and support teams understand the same safeguarding approach before the guidance comes into force.
The key message is that special schools should move away from informal or inconsistent practice and towards cautious, recorded, case-by-case decision making. As taken from the guidance, “it is not for schools and colleges to initiate any action in this area; this guidance is focused on circumstances where a child or their parent has raised a request relating to social transition to which a school or college is responding”.
- Social Transition - Practitioners should not initiate social transition or make informal changes themselves; any request should be treated as a safeguarding matter, escalated through agreed procedures, and considered with early DSL involvement, parental engagement unless this would create a safeguarding risk, and relevant multidisciplinary input. Staff should understand the child’s wishes, while recognising that decisions relating to social transition are not simply a matter of following those wishes and must take account of the child’s communication needs, understanding, vulnerability, wider context and support arrangements.
- Record Keeping - NASS members are urged to maintain accurate records, including biological sex where legally required, and document the reasons for decisions made. Where there are constraints arising from law, safeguarding duties or school policies, members should explain those constraints sensitively to children and families and keep arrangements under review as needs change.
- Designated Spaces - In practical terms, special schools should review policies and risk assessments relating to toilets, changing rooms, boarding and residential accommodation, intimate and personal care, transport, trips, sport and other designated spaces. Schools must not allow pupils into toilets, changing rooms, or boarding or residential accommodation which are designated for the opposite sex, with no exceptions.
- Policies - For other policies, members should consider whether a policy disadvantages a child who is questioning their gender relative to other children who are not and should seek early advice where updates may be needed to ensure the policy has a legitimate aim and is a proportionate means of achieving that legitimate aim.
Part five: Child-on-child abuse (including harassment and violence) (Pages 123-154)
Part Five has been updated and restructured to strengthen the approach to child-on-child abuse, including clearer recognition that behaviour may sit on a continuum and may escalate if not addressed. The restructured section presents a more progressive continuum of sexual behaviours, from early indicators of harmful sexual behaviour through to sexual harassment and sexual violence, and highlights how misogynistic attitudes can underpin and normalise harassment and violence. Reference is made to the Hackett continuum model to support staff in distinguishing between developmentally inappropriate, problematic, abusive and violent behaviour.
For special schools, this will require careful application where learners may have developmental delay, communication needs, social understanding difficulties or trauma-related presentations, with responses that are proportionate and informed by the learner’s SEND, while still maintaining high expectations of safety, respect and dignity.
Special schools should review their relevant policies to ensure they recognise harmful sexual behaviour and misogyny, avoid minimising any form of abuse as “banter”, and distinguish between developmentally inappropriate behaviour, harmful behaviour and safeguarding concerns that require referral or specialist intervention.
What should NASS members do now?
In practical terms, NASS members should consider the following steps as a priority:
- Review and update the child protection and safeguarding policy to reflect KCSIE 2026 before 1 September 2026.
- Ensure all staff, including non-teaching and multidisciplinary staff, read Part One in full and confirm their understanding.
- Audit volunteer and DBS arrangements in light of the removal of the supervision exemption under the Crime and Policing Act 2026.
- Review online safety, filtering and monitoring policies to address AI-related risks, including deepfakes and AI-generated intimate imagery.
- Review policies on restrictive intervention, mobile phones, designated spaces and gender-questioning children.
- Plan training for the autumn term covering the key changes, tailored to different staff roles and the specific needs of the setting. Please keep an eye on the NASS website for bespoke special school safeguarding training: NASS events
The key message for NASS members is that the final guidance now reflects several areas where specialist provision will need tailored implementation rather than generic policy wording. Leaders should consider not only whether policies are compliant, but whether staff across the whole setting understand what the changes mean for the children and young people they support.