Keeping Children Safe in Education is the statutory guidance every school, college and MAT must work to, and every member of staff needs to understand it, every year, without exception. Our new KCSIE 2026 course is now live in your DPE training portal, built to make that annual refresh straightforward, accurate, and genuinely useful, not just a box-ticking exercise.

What's in the course

The course is designed to be completed in one sitting, and covers the guidance in a format staff can easily access. It includes:

• A summary video walking through what's changed and what matters most for staff in 2026
• The full KCSIE 2026 PDF document, built directly into the course
• A short multiple-choice quiz to check understanding and confirm completion
• Supporting resources to go alongside the core training
• Certificate of completion,  giving you a clean, dated record for each member of staff without any extra admin.

One thing worth flagging: previously, many schools uploaded their own copy of the KCSIE document alongside their training. That's no longer necessary as the current KCSIE PDF is included in the course itself, so there's nothing extra for you to source or upload.

Why it matters

Annual KCSIE training isn't optional, and Ofsted and safeguarding audits will expect to see evidence that it's been completed by every member of staff, not just teaching staff. Completing it through this course gives your school a clear, timestamped completion record and certificate for each staff member which is useful for your single central record and audit trail without any extra admin on your part.

How to enrol

Enrolment is managed in two ways:

1. The staff member can login and take the course by choosing it from the My Courses under My activities.

2. Alternatively, the data protection lead can assign the course using a to-do assigned through the DPE portal:

1. Log in to your DPE training portal as an admin user
2. From the Dashboard, choose ' Training Courses' about half way down the page'.
3. Choose  "(KCSIE) 2026 - Annual Staff Training"  from the list as the course to assign
4. Choose 'Unenrolled' from the drop down on the right
5. Choose the staff member(s) the to-do should go to
6. Click the 'Add Todo' button at the top
7. Add  a 'To-do Title' and description, which might be your email to staff about doing the course. Add a time period for completion. And consider adding in a reminder the day before it is due (otherwise they will not receive a reminder).
8. Please note - if you are sending many of these they will go into a queue, so check back after a while!
9. Staff will see the course appear as an assigned to-do in their own portal and receive an email, ready to work through in one sitting
10. Once the quiz is passed, the certificate is generated automatically and the to-do is marked complete

Completion status updates automatically in your DPE dashboard as staff work through it: no certificates to chase or spreadsheets to update.

You may also wish to review our recent article -> KCSIE 2026 Data Protection Changes: What Schools Need to Know