KCSIE 2025: What Schools and Colleges in England Will Need to Do to Meet New Filtering and Monitoring Expectations

The Department for Education (DfE) has released the draft version of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2025, which will come into statutory force in September 2025. This statutory guidance applies to schools and colleges in England only. It outlines key duties that education settings must follow to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

Among the most significant updates in the 2025 edition are new and clarified expectations for filtering and monitoring, reflecting the increasing risks posed by harmful online content and emerging technologies like generative AI.

This article highlights what’s changing, what schools and colleges will need to do from September 2025, and how the UK Safer Internet Centre can support education settings in understanding and meeting their statutory obligations.

Summary of Key Changes in Filtering and Monitoring (2025)

Area

Leadership awareness and escalation

2024 Guidance – No reference to leadership’s role in system oversight.

2025 Guidance – Leadership must be aware of filtering and monitoring systems, manage them effectively, and escalate concerns.

Major Change? Yes

DfE self-assessment tool

2024 Guidance – No mention of structured self-assessment.

2025 Guidance – Introduces Plan Technology for Your School to help evaluate filtering/monitoring systems and identify improvements.

Major Change? Yes

Generative AI inclusion

2024 Guidance – No reference to AI.

2025 Guidance – Filtering and monitoring responsibilities now explicitly include technologies using generative AI.

Major Change? Yes

What Will Schools and Colleges in England Need to Do from September 2025?
From September, schools and colleges in England will be expected to:

Ensure that senior leaders and DSLs understand how filtering and monitoring systems work, including how to manage them and escalate safeguarding concerns.

Use the DfE’s Plan Technology for Your School self-assessment tool to review current arrangements and receive tailored recommendations.

Identify and mitigate risks related to generative AI, recognising that filtering and monitoring systems must address not just static content, but dynamic and AI-generated material as well.

Actively check that filtering and monitoring systems work in practice, not just on paper.

DfE Filtering and Monitoring Standards: The Legal Foundation
These updates build upon the existing DfE Filtering and Monitoring Standards, which remain critical in helping schools meet their safeguarding duties. The four standards require schools to:

Assign roles and responsibilities – Ensure that staff know who is responsible for managing and reviewing filtering and monitoring.

Implement effective monitoring strategies – Systems must be able to detect safeguarding risks in real time or near-real time.

Use appropriate filtering technologies – These should block access to harmful content based on age, risk and context.

Review filtering and monitoring provision regularly – Crucially, schools must test their systems and check that they work as intended in the real-world environments children are using.

Schools should not rely solely on provider assurances or documentation—they must ensure that systems are actively functioning and proportionate to the risks their pupils face online.
 
What Staff With Responsibilities Will Need to Do

For Designated Safeguarding Leads and School Leaders:
Review and update school policies to reflect the 2025 expectations.
Be confident in how your filtering and monitoring systems operate—and how to respond when concerns are raised.
Coordinate with IT and network managers to ensure risks, including those linked to generative AI, are mitigated.

For IT and Network Managers:
Support the school in meeting its statutory duties by maintaining effective, context-sensitive filtering.
Regularly test whether your system blocks harmful content and generates appropriate alerts.
Help school leaders complete the DfE self-assessment and implement improvements.

For Governors and Trustees:
Ask for assurance that filtering and monitoring responsibilities are understood and managed.
Expect to see evidence that systems are reviewed and tested regularly—and that they are working as expected.
 
Supporting Tools: TestFiltering.com

The TestFiltering.com utility, developed by SWGfL, gives schools a quick and practical way to observe how their filtering systems are behaving on their own network.

TestFiltering.com helps schools observe whether harmful or inappropriate content is being blocked and supports informed conversations between safeguarding staff, technical leads, and filtering providers.  Importantly, TestFiltering.com does not measure compliance, but it helps schools understand the operation of filtering on their connection.
 
Additional Support: UKSIC’s Appropriate Filtering and Monitoring Guidance
The UK Safer Internet Centre’s guidance on Appropriate Filtering and Monitoring remains an essential reference. It helps schools and colleges ensure their systems are:

Age-appropriate, proportionate and evidence-based;
Clearly understood by safeguarding leads and staff;
Reviewed regularly and embedded within a whole-school safeguarding culture.
 
Final Thoughts

KCSIE 2025 marks a shift toward active digital risk management—where understanding, oversight and real-world system behaviour matter more than ever. These responsibilities apply only to schools and colleges in England, but they reflect wider concerns about the safety and wellbeing of children in online spaces.

The UK Safer Internet Centre will continue to support schools, colleges and filtering providers through these changes. Schools that begin reviewing, testing and planning now will be well-positioned to meet the new requirements when they take effect in September.