Beyond KCSIE Compliance: Cultivating a Culture of Vigilance in Safer Recruitment in Education Settings
By Sarah Wyllie – Senior HR Consultant and Lead Accredited Safer Recruitment Trainer at HR Connect
With the latest update to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) published by the Department for Education (DfE) on 1st September 2025, there’s never been a more important time for education establishments to review their safeguarding and safer recruitment practices.
Safer recruitment is not a tick box exercise or one off event. It goes far beyond legal compliance and making the right recruitment decisions. It’s about embedding safeguarding into the DNA and fabric of your school. Safeguarding must become a living, breathing culture of vigilance that permeates every corner of school life. Every staff member, volunteer, governor / trustee and stakeholder shares responsibility for protecting children. At its core, safer recruitment is about one uncompromising goal, preventing individuals who pose a risk to children from working in our Schools.
Why Safer Recruitment Must Go Beyond the Basics
Safer recruitment practices emerged in response to the tragic murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002. Their killer, Ian Huntley, a school caretaker with a history of serious allegations was able to gain employment due to systematic failures. The Bichard Inquiry (2004) exposed serious flaws in recruitment and vetting processes in schools leading to sweeping reforms.
But safer recruitment alone is not infallible. True safeguarding goes much further, it demands ongoing training, regular policy reviews and a culture where openness and challenge are the norm. As someone who has worked extensively with schools on HR and safeguarding matters, I’ve seen first hand how even the most robust recruitment processes can falter if vigilance fades once a candidate is appointed.
Sir Michael Bichard’s warning remains as relevant as ever “If a sufficiently devious person is determined to seek out opportunities to work their evil, no one can guarantee they will be stopped. Our task is to make it as difficult as possible for them to succeed.” For me, this quote captures the essence of safer recruitment and why it must be treated as a continuous, collective and uncompromising responsibility.
KCSIE 2025: What’s New?
While this year’s changes are described as ‘technical’ they offer a vital opportunity to embed previous reforms more deeply. Key changes include:
- Online Safety: Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories are now explicitly recognised as safeguarding harms. Schools are encouraged to use the DfE’s Plan Technology for Your School service to assess filtering and monitoring systems.
- Cybersecurity: Clarification that DfE’s standards are designed to help schools improve resilience against cyber threats.
- Artificial Intelligence: New links to DfE guidance on the use of generative AI in education, reflecting the growing relevance.
- Alternative Provision (AP): Stronger emphasis on oversight of pupils including attendance and safeguarding checks.
- Virtual School Heads: Now carry a non-statutory responsibility to promote the educational achievement of children in kinship care.
- Attendance: Working Together to Improve School Attendance is now statutory, highlighting the safeguarding implications of persistent absence.
From Policy to Practice: Embedding Safeguarding in School Culture
So how do schools move from solely a compliance focus to that critical ongoing culture of vigilance? Here are my essential recommendations for cultivating a vigilant, safeguarding-first culture;
- Regular training that goes beyond the basics
While legally only one recruitment panel member needs to be trained in safer recruitment, I strongly recommend that every recruitment panel member receives safer recruitment training.
All members of staff should receive ongoing safeguarding training including policies and procedures, unconscious bias awareness, grooming behaviours and digital safeguarding which is becoming more of a prevalent issue. Staff must be confident in spotting red flags and feel empowered to raise concerns.
HR, school business managers, senior leaders, governors and trustees must be fully equipped to understand and implement legal requirements and best practice in safer recruitment including pre-employment checks and Single Central Record (SCR) management.
- Lead by example
Safeguarding must be visible in leadership behaviours and evident throughout the School. Utilise all available opportunities including staff meetings and email communication, performance reviews and curriculum planning. Leaders must create and foster an environment where concerns are raised confidently and without hesitation, modelling the vigilance they expect from others.
- A living Single Central Record (SCR)
The SCR should be dynamic, regularly updated and actively audited. It must reflect real time status and everyone involved in maintaining / auditing the SCR should be appropriately trained and understand its significance. Schools should ensure that agencies and third-party providers that they use meet the same rigorous standards.
- Digital due diligence
Online searches and social media checks are now part of the recruitment process and whilst not a legal requirement, schools are expected to follow this statutory guidance unless they have a good reason not to. In my professional view, there is little justification for not undertaking these checks as from a safeguarding perspective it is difficult to argue against the value of these checks. They must be conducted ethically and transparently and shortlisted candidates must be informed in advance before they are undertaken. Both of these additional checks help identify potential red flags that may not surface through traditional vetting checks.
Online searches were introduced in 2022 following the case of Iria Suárez González, who was employed as a teaching assistant at a primary school in Oxford. The school had carried out all required safer recruitment procedures in line with statutory guidance. However, unknown to the school, she had been convicted of the brutal murder of a teenage girl in Spain when she was 17. Due to differences in international legal systems, her conviction was considered spent under Spanish law and therefore did not appear on her criminal record. The incident exposed a significant safeguarding gap and led to calls for more robust checks which ultimately led to online searches being introduced to help prevent similar cases and strengthen safer recruitment practices.
- Effective safeguarding governance
Safeguarding should be a standing agenda item for governors and trustees. A dedicated safeguarding governor / trustee should oversee regular audits and be trained in safer recruitment and SCR responsibilities. This ensures accountability and strategic oversight of safeguarding.
- Promote transparent reporting and whistleblowing
Staff and students must trust the safeguarding system. Whistleblowing procedures should be clear, accessible and actively promoted. Creating a safe space for reporting concerns is essential to a culture of vigilance.
- A clear staff Code of Conduct
Every school should have a robust, well-communicated code of conduct that sets expectations and reinforces safeguarding values. This document should be more than a policy, it should be lived by all members of staff and not just kept in a drawer!
A Culture of Challenge and Curiosity
Ultimately, safeguarding is not just about policies and procedures or compliance, it’s about professional curiosity and collective responsibility. It’s about noticing the subtle change, asking the extra question and challenging assumptions or the status quo. It’s recognising that safeguarding doesn’t stop at the school gate or at the end of the interview process once an individual has been hired. It’s an ongoing, daily commitment to every child’s safety and wellbeing.
As HR professionals and school leaders, we must lead this cultural shift. It is essential that schools embrace the mindset that ‘it could happen here’ and ensure that vigilance becomes second nature and part of the DNA and fabric of the school itself.
About Sarah Wyllie, Senior HR Consultant and Lead Accredited Safer Recruitment Trainer at HR Connect
With over 20 years of experience in Human Resources, Sarah brings a wealth of expertise, adaptability and a strategic people first approach to her role at HR Connect. Her career spans the private, public and education sectors equipping her with a broad understanding of workplace dynamics and the ability to navigate diverse organisational cultures with ease.
As HR Connect’s Lead Safer Recruitment specialist, Sarah is a fully accredited trainer by the Lucy Faithfull Foundation Consortium. She is deeply passionate about safeguarding and takes pride in championing safer recruitment practices that go far beyond compliance.
HR Connect Safer Recruitment in Education Training Course – Book Now!
Ensuring legal compliance and adopting best practice is critical and that starts with making sure everyone who needs to be trained is trained and that their training is up to date.
Our one day virtual, in-depth and interactive Safer Recruitment course is tailored specifically for the education sector, equipping Headteachers, Senior Leaders, Line Managers, School Business Managers, HR Professionals, Governors, Trustees and anyone in the education sector involved in the recruitment and selection of staff, with the tools, insights, and mindset to safeguard effectively, from recruitment to daily practice.
View more information on the course, including topics covered, dates for 2025/2026 academic year and introduction video >>
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