Key Takeaways

• Filtering and monitoring is now everyone’s responsibility. KCSIE 2026 requires all staff to understand their role in filtering and monitoring, making it a core part of safeguarding training and induction.
• AI-generated harms are now explicitly recognised. The updated guidance includes AI-generated imagery, such as deepfakes and deep nudes, highlighting the need for schools to prepare for emerging online risks.
• Safeguarding requires visibility as well as protection. KCSIE 2026 reinforces that effective safeguarding depends on both filtering harmful content and monitoring online activity to give DSLs the context they need to respond to concerns.

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 has been published by the Department for Education and comes into force on 1 September 2026, replacing the 2025 version. All schools and colleges in England must have regard to it when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. 
This is not a minor update. Several of the changes carry direct implications for how schools manage online safety, and for the role that filtering and monitoring plays in meeting the statutory standard.

Every member of staff now has a statutory responsibility to understand filtering and monitoring.

Paragraph 12 of KCSIE 2026 states that all staff must receive safeguarding and child protection training at induction and that this training must include an understanding of the expectations, roles and responsibilities in relation to filtering and monitoring. The guidance directs readers to paragraphs 171 to 175 for further detail on what that understanding should look like.

In previous versions of the guidance, filtering and monitoring sat primarily within the responsibilities of the DSL and the IT team. KCSIE 2026 changes that. Every member of staff, including those who do not work directly with children, now needs to understand what filtering and monitoring means in their school and what their role within it is.

Governing bodies and proprietors are required to ensure that mechanisms are in place to help staff understand and discharge those responsibilities.

For schools, the practical implication is clear. Before September, induction programmes need to include filtering and monitoring as a standard element, not an afterthought. Staff need to know the systems exist, understand what they are designed to do, and know what to do if they have a concern.

Lightspeed Filter and Lightspeed Alert are built to work together as a system the whole school community can understand and engage with. Filter ensures pupils can only access age-appropriate content across every device and network the school manages.

Alert provides real-time monitoring that surfaces concerning activity and routes it to the DSL for review. Having the right tools in place is the foundation. Ensuring staff understand them is what KCSIE 2026 now requires in addition.

AI-generated imagery is explicitly within scope for the first time.

KCSIE 2026 expands the definition of nudes and semi-nudes to explicitly include images that are digitally altered or wholly generated using artificial intelligence. The guidance names deepfakes and deep nudes directly. This is not a peripheral addition. 
Generative AI tools are increasingly accessible to secondary-age pupils and the risk of AI-created imagery being used to harm or harass other children is a real and growing concern. The fact that the guidance has named this risk explicitly signals that schools are expected to be aware of it and prepared to respond to it. Monitoring systems need to reflect the threats that pupils and DSLs are actually facing today, not the landscape as it existed several years ago.

Online safety is framed as a thread running through the whole of safeguarding, not a standalone topic.

KCSIE 2026 states directly that technology is a significant component in many safeguarding and wellbeing issues and that in many cases abuse and other risks will take place concurrently both online and offline. Child-on-child abuse, exploitation, mental health concerns, criminal exploitation, and radicalisation are all discussed with reference to the online dimension alongside the offline one.

This matters for how DSLs and senior leaders think about their monitoring provision. Knowing what a pupil has attempted to access, searched for, or shared gives the DSL contextual information that a filter report alone cannot provide. Filtering tells you what was stopped. Monitoring tells you what was happening, and it is that fuller picture that allows a DSL to make a properly informed judgment about risk.

Lightspeed Insight sits alongside Filter and Alert to give schools visibility into how devices and the internet are being used across the school day. That data supports DSLs and senior leaders in identifying trends, understanding the full online safety picture, and making decisions grounded in evidence rather than assumption.

The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 is now part of the statutory framework.

KCSIE 2026 updates its definition of data protection laws to include the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 alongside the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK GDPR. Schools and organisations managing monitoring data and safeguarding records need to ensure their processes remain compliant with the full current legislative picture. Lightspeed holds and processes data in accordance with UK data protection requirements and we are happy to support schools in understanding how our data practices align with their obligations.

What schools and MATs should be doing between now and September.

Review induction processes and ensure filtering and monitoring is included as a standard element for all staff, not only those working directly with children. Check that the DSL has a clear, documented process from alert to action, and that this process is understood by the senior leadership team. Ensure governors and trustees understand their accountability for online safety under the updated guidance. And review whether current monitoring provision genuinely covers the risks the guidance now names, including AI-generated content and the overlap between online and offline harm.

KCSIE 2026 raises the bar. The good news is that schools with the right systems and processes in place are well positioned to meet it. If you would like to talk through what the updated guidance means for your current setup, our team is here to help.