Safeguarding policies

National safeguarding guidance for education settings

Education settings are required to comply with national guidance and legislation. This includes:

Working Together to Safeguard Children outlines what individuals, organisations and agencies must do to protect children from harm and promote their welfare.
Keeping Children Safe in Education is statutory guidance for all staff working in schools and colleges which outlines their responsibilities to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.
Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework outlines the standards that school and childcare providers must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework is mandatory for all group and school-based early years providers and Childminders in England.

National and local guidance and information can also be found on the Kent Safeguarding Children’s Multi-agency Partnership

Links to other national guidance which may be useful for DSLs and education leaders includes:

NSPCC - KCSIE 2023 CASPAR briefing
Education Safeguarding Service - KCSIE 2023 Online Safety Summary
LGFL - KCSIE part one and annex A translations

Professional practice

Guidance for Safer Working Practice provides practical advice for education staff around their own standards and professional practice to reduce the risk of allegations being made against them.
Teachers’ Standards for school leaders, staff and governing bodies, outlines the minimum requirements and standards for teachers’ professional practice and conduct.
'What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused' provides guidance to help practitioners identify the signs of child abuse and neglect and understand what action to take.

Parental responsibility

Information sharing

Information sharing advice for safeguarding practitioners

Behaviour

Data Protection and cloud services

Child on child sexual violence and sexual harassment

Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges

Inspection

The Education Inspection Framework (EIF) applies to maintained schools and academies, non-association independent schools, further education and skills providers and early years settings.
ISI safeguarding content

LESAS child protection policy templates

Education settings must have a suite of effective safeguarding policies which describe the expectations, procedures and arrangements put in place to safeguard and promote children’s welfare; these policies should be updated at least annually, or whenever there is an update or change to local practice and/or national statutory guidance or legislation. All members of the school or setting community should have access to these policies and all staff should sign to say they have read and understood its contents.

The following documents are provided as a starting point and should be adapted by DSLs and leaders or managers to meet the specific requirements for their individual school or setting. LESAS make every effort to ensure that the information in our templates is accurate and up to date, however, ultimate responsibility for ensuring their individual policies are appropriate remains the responsibility of the school, college or setting leadership and management team. If errors are brought to our attention, we will correct them as soon as practicable.

Child protection policy templates

Our exemplar child protection policies have been developed in accordance with the key principles established in the Children's Act 1989 and 2004, related national statutory guidance and local procedures.

Exemplar Schools Child Protection Policy Template 2024-25 - to be used from 1 September 2024.
Exemplar Early Years Child Protection Policy Templates 2024-25 - to be used from 1 September 2024.

The child protection policy template content for 2024-25 was reviewed and published initially in July 2024 and was last updated in September 2024. In the 2024-25 school policy template, where possible, new, moved and updated content for 2024-25 is highlighted in yellow and additional content in version two is highlighted in green. The 2024-25 policy template for early years providers was updated and reordered throughout and we recommend settings use the updated document in full.

Online safety templates

Keeping Children Safe in Education requires schools and colleges to have “a staff behaviour policy which should, amongst other things, include: acceptable use of technologies, staff/pupil relationships and communications, including the use of social media” and that schools and colleges "should have a clear policy on the use of mobile and smart technology." The EYFS requires early years providers to "implement a policy and procedures to safeguard children ...must... cover the use of mobile phones and cameras in the setting."

As well as embedding online safety content within our child protection policy templates, LESAS provides additional policy templates for education settings to adapt. These templates can be embedded within existing safeguarding policies or standalone according to leadership decisions.

AUP posters

Kent County Council and EiS (now Cantium) published AUP posters for use by educational settings. The posters are A3 in size. To print smaller sizes, use the settings provided by your printer (i.e. for A4 reduce to 71%). If supported, set your printer to print borderless.

Additional online safety templates and guidance

Additional templates, guidance and resources from the LADO Education Safeguarding Advisory Service

Other optional template resources are also available to support DSLs and leaders in educational settings.

Please contact the LADO and Education Safeguarding Advisory Service to discuss queries regarding our policy templates and guidance.