Safeguarding policies

National Guidance for Education Settings
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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:

Professional practice

Parental responsibility

Information Sharing and Data Protection

Behaviour

Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and health Education 

Sexual abuse, including Child on child sexual violence and sexual harassment

Inspection

Early years and Childcare

LESAS Child Protection Policy Templates
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Education settings must maintain a suite of up-to-date safeguarding policies that outline how they protect and promote children’s safety and welfare. These policies should be reviewed annually or whenever national/local guidance or legislation changes. Everyone in the setting should have access to them, and staff must confirm they’ve read and understood them.

The following  templates and guidance documents are provided as a starting point and should be adapted by DSLs and leaders/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 team. If errors are brought to our attention, we will correct them as soon as practicable.

Child protection policy template

Our exemplar child protection policies for schools/colleges and early years settings are updated and developed in accordance with the key principles established in the Children's Act 1989 and 2004, related national statutory guidance and local procedures. Our current template reflects KCSIE and EYFS 2025.

The Early Years and Schools Child Protection Policy Templates were refreshed and reissued in March 2026 to align with the updated Working Together to Safeguard Children 2026 guidance. The Schools version has also been revised to include the latest national requirements specific to the school sector. All new or updated sections are shaded in grey for ease of reference.

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 above, LESAS provides additional policy templates for education settings to adapt. These templates can be embedded within existing safeguarding policies or be used standalone according to leadership decisions.

The policy template content for 2025-26 was reviewed following the publication of KCSIE 2025 and EYFS 2025. The social media and mobile and smart device policy templates were updated and republished in March 2026 to reflect  the updated DfE non-statutory  mobile phones in schools guidance.

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 Education Safeguarding Advisory Service to discuss queries regarding our policy templates and guidance.