KCSIE 2026 Guidance: Filtering, Monitoring and Online Safety for Schools
Understand your online-safety responsibilities and how Ativion helps your school put them into practice.
Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) 2026 is now in force in England. For school and trust leaders, safeguarding teams and IT staff, the task is to make sure policies, technology and everyday practice work together to protect students.
Ativion helps schools manage online access, identify potential safeguarding concerns and gather evidence for review. Our practical guide maps the relevant KCSIE expectations against ContentKeeper and StudentKeeper, with a clear explanation of what remains your school’s responsibility.
How Ativion supports your school
From understanding the guidance to putting it into practice
Our earlier briefing explored the proposed KCSIE changes. This update focuses on filtering, monitoring and online safety under the final September 2026 guidance, helping you connect the expectations with your school’s systems and safeguarding processes.
Four questions provide a useful starting point:
- Is your coverage appropriate? Check how filtering and monitoring apply across relevant devices, users and locations, including managed devices used beyond school.
- Can staff recognise and respond to concerns? Make sure the right people receive alerts, understand the context and know when to escalate.
- Can you demonstrate effectiveness? Review filtering and monitoring at least once every academic year, with recorded checks, findings and actions.
- Are policies keeping pace with online activity? Consider AI tools, harmful interactions and behaviour within permitted platforms, while keeping legitimate learning and support resources accessible.
The annual effectiveness review should be led by a senior leadership team member, supported by the designated safeguarding lead and IT staff. Reports from your systems contribute evidence; the review also needs the school’s judgement and follow-through.
Include AI in your online-safety approach
ContentKeeper’s AI Services category supports decisions about access to general-purpose AI tools. StudentKeeper can provide evidence of visible prompts and responses within supported screen capture and text recognition activity.
These capabilities help inform oversight, but they do not provide continuous visibility of every AI conversation. Schools still need to decide which tools are suitable, teach acceptable use and assess safeguarding and privacy risks.
Ativion KCSIE Mapping Guide
How our customers can use our services as a platform for KCSIE enablement
For safeguarding and IT teams wishing to navigate with a clear view of what the guidance expects and how your Ativion systems can contribute.
The guide sets out:
- Relevant filtering, monitoring and online-safety expectations.
- How ContentKeeper and StudentKeeper can help.
- The policies, decisions and actions your school owns.
- Coverage considerations and links to further guidance.
Use it to prepare discussions with your designated safeguarding lead (DSL) and IT lead, inform your review and identify questions about your current setup.
Free PDF. No sign-up required.
Our technology supports the people responsible for safeguarding
No supplier can make a school KCSIE compliant. Effective safeguarding also depends on leadership, staff training, appropriate policies, preventative education and a timely response to concerns.
Ativion supports that work with tools to manage access, identify potential issues and provide useful evidence. Your school, however, remains responsible for deciding what is appropriate for its students and acting on the information available.
Read the official guidance
Keeping children safe in education 2026
DfE filtering and monitoring core standard
Updated October 2026. This page focuses on relevant online-safety responsibilities for schools and colleges in England. It should be read alongside the full statutory guidance. Product functionality and coverage depend on deployment and configuration.