KCSIE 2026 Compliance Self-Review Tool for Schools and Colleges
Review your safeguarding arrangements against Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2026 with our free compliance self-review tool.
Designed for DSLs, safeguarding leads, senior leaders, governors and trust teams, the tool takes you through 16 areas of the guidance and more than 100 checkpoints. Review what is already in place, identify gaps or priorities, record the evidence behind your decisions and create a clear action plan for your school or college.
(Please download and complete the review on a laptop or desktop computer. It has been developed for use on Windows, Mac and Chromebook devices and will not work on tablets or phones.)
Turn KCSIE 2026 guidance into evidence and action
Keeping children safe in education 2026 applies from 1 September, and every setting in England is now working to it. Governors ask how leaders know the arrangements are sound, trust boards ask for assurance they can minute, and inspectors ask what happened when something was tested. The answers usually exist, spread across policies, training records, filtering checks, minutes and the single central record, and pulling them together takes far longer than reading the guidance did.
The KCSIE 2026 Compliance Self-Review gives a leadership team one place to do that work. It moves through the guidance section by section, asking whether each expectation is in place, partly in place, not in place or not applicable, and prompting for the systems in use and the evidence that would be pointed to. The picture builds as the review is completed, so the position is visible before the end rather than after it.
What the tool gives you
Review all 16 areas of KCSIE 2026
Leadership and governance, information for all staff, the DSL, training and curriculum, online safety, filtering and monitoring, Prevent, specific safeguarding issues, children at greater risk, child-on-child abuse, children’s voice, safer recruitment, allegations, safer working practice, records and data protection, multi-agency working, and assurance.
Identify statutory KCSIE requirements
Checkpoints that rest on a must in the guidance are marked as such. Leave one of those not in place and the section shows as a priority whatever the rest of the score says, so the things that carry statutory weight cannot be averaged away.
Create a KCSIE action plan and heatmap
Export an Excel workbook with four sheets: a colour-coded heatmap across all sixteen sections, an action plan drawn from everything rated below secure, the full set of responses, and the evidence and records noted along the way. It is built to go straight into a governor pack.
Complete your safeguarding review privately
Ratings, notes, named systems and referenced records stay in the page on your own machine. Nothing is sent to NetSupport or stored on a server, no cookies are set and no analytics run. Progress saves to a file you keep, so a review can be paused and picked up later, or passed to a colleague to finish.
Please note: this tool supports professional judgement and does not replace it. It is not legal advice, and its outputs need checking, completing and ratifying in the context of your own setting, policies and local safeguarding arrangements.
This file runs on your own computer, not in the cloud. Nothing is saved automatically. You should save regularly, as refreshing the page or closing it will lose any progress. Click Save progress file to save it and open it again from your file explorer when you want to return to it. Use a laptop or desktop if you can, since there is a lot to read and record here, and a phone will make hard work of it.
Nothing leaves your device. Your ratings and notes are not sent to NetSupport or stored on a server. No cookies, no analytics. The page fetches one file from the internet to build your spreadsheet, and it carries none of your answers, so everything but the export works offline. Rate each statement In place, Partly in place or Not in place. Use Not applicable only where the duty does not apply to you. Add an owner and your evidence, including where you rate something in place, so the judgement can be checked later. Statements marked Must are statutory, or KCSIE 2026 says schools and colleges must do them. Leave one not in place, and your overall position reports as a priority, whatever your percentage. Every section ends with a test. Whilst not essential, look at them carefully and respond. It will help ensure what you have in place is fit for purpose when considering your cohorts. The responses you put in go through to the exported spreadsheet on the final worksheet.
Share the work out if you want to: save the file, pass it on, let the next person resume from it and add their sections. Whoever finishes runs the export.