The publication of Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) 2026 will inevitably prompt schools to review policies, update procedures and familiarise staff with the latest statutory expectations. These practical changes are of course important and necessary. Clear reporting pathways, effective multi-agency working and robust safeguarding systems remain fundamental to protecting children and young people.
Yet one of the most significant developments in this year’s guidance is less about new procedures than a broader shift in emphasis. Throughout the document, there is increasing recognition that safeguarding cannot simply be understood as responding effectively once harm has occurred. The guidance instead places greater emphasis on prevention, early intervention, professional curiosity, trusted relationships and evidence-based support. Harmful sexual behaviour, for instance, is described not only as something schools must respond to, but as something that can be prevented through timely and appropriate intervention.
For us, this raises an important question. If safeguarding is increasingly expected to prevent harm rather than simply manage it, what does effective preventative safeguarding actually look like?
Our research we’ve conducted over the past five years – including with Professor Jessica Ringrose in partnership with Surrey Police exploring responses to harmful sexual behaviour in schools, alongside the development of the Reimagining RSE programme –suggests that the answer lies not only in policies and procedures, but in the wider culture of schools. This is the reason we prefer to use the term harmful sexualised behaviours and cultures HSB(c). In this framing, safeguarding is shaped every day through the messages young people receive about relationships, consent, sexuality, gender and disclosure; through the ways adults respond to uncertainty; and through whether young people experience schools as places where difficult conversations can happen without fear of shame or premature judgement.
KCSIE provides schools with a statutory framework for schools. The next challenge is ensuring that this framework is enacted through educational cultures that genuinely support prevention. To do that, we think schools need to pay attention to three equally important dimensions of safeguarding: what we do, how we understand and how safeguarding is experienced or, as out outline further below, on what we’ve come to understand as the production, explanation and aesthetics domains of safeguarding.
Every safeguarding response is also an educational message
KCSIE 2026 places renewed emphasis on preventing harmful sexual behaviour through early intervention, professional curiosity and evidence-based support. While we agree that this is important, prevention is not something that begins only when concerns emerge. It is shaped continuously by the everyday culture of schools and the messages young people receive about relationships, consent, gender and disclosure.
In our work, we sometimes find that safeguarding and education are treated as separate activities. Safeguarding is seen as what happens when something goes wrong, while education is what happens beforehand or later down the line to address the wider issues relating to a particular incident. In reality, the two are inseparable. Every safeguarding response is also an educational response. It is not only how we respond or what we say explicitly, but also the implicit rules and messages, in what is often referred to as part of the ‘hidden curriculum’ of schools. It communicates to young people what behaviours are taken seriously, whether adults can be trusted, what happens when concerns are raised and whether seeking help is likely to result in support, blame or punishment.
Our research on harmful sexual behaviour in schools found that young people’s willingness to disclose concerns was shaped not only by the incident itself, but by their expectations of how adults and peers would respond. Those expectations are formed long before an incident occurs. They develop through RSHE lessons, assemblies, behaviour policies, how uniform is managed, informal conversations with staff, how staff model their own emotional regulation and the ways previous incidents have been handled within the school community.
This means that safeguarding culture is not simply about having robust procedures. It is also about creating an environment in which young people believe they will be listened to, treated fairly and supported with dignity. Prevention therefore extends beyond stopping harmful behaviours. It also involves creating the conditions in which young people feel able to seek help early, challenge harmful norms and participate in creating safer peer cultures. Thinking about safeguarding in this way helps explain why policies alone are never enough. Effective safeguarding requires schools to balance three interconnected domains of practice.
Prevention requires more than certainty
KCSIE provides schools with clear expectations: staff need to know what constitutes harmful sexual behaviour, when concerns should be reported, how information should be shared and when external agencies should become involved. These statutory responsibilities are designed to ensure that children and young people receive consistent, timely and robust responses when harm occurs, and that schools do not allow uncertainty to become an excuse for inaction.
At the same time, the wider safeguarding landscape is changing in ways that may alter the kinds of uncertainty that practitioners encounter. One notable example is the guidance on mobile phones, which, although not the focus of this piece (you can read more about our response to phones here), is likely to have implications for safeguarding practice. Whilst many school leaders will understandably welcome fewer phones in school, mobile devices have often provided contemporaneous evidence of incidents occurring both on and off school premises. Videos, message exchanges and images have frequently enabled safeguarding leads to identify patterns of harassment or harmful behaviour that might otherwise have been dismissed as ‘banter’, conflicting accounts or one young person’s word against another’s. Although such evidence never removes the need for careful interpretation, it has often reduced evidential uncertainty and required schools to engage more directly with incidents that may previously have been overlooked.
Yet even where evidence is available, many of the most difficult safeguarding decisions remain matters of interpretation rather than proof. Our research with Surrey Police found that the most challenging cases were rarely those in which staff did not know the procedure. Rather, they were those where the procedure alone could not answer the questions practitioners faced. In such instances, staff are left navigating complex judgements about development, intent, coercion, peer dynamics, proportionality and future relationships. These challenges cannot just be understood as a failure of policy. Instead, they reflected the reality that harmful sexual behaviour rarely presents itself as a neat or easily categorised event.
The same tension exists within education. Young people are often taught unambiguous messages about consent, image sharing and the law. While these messages are intended to establish clear, defined boundaries and communicate expectations, our research consistently shows that young people’s experiences rarely unfold in such categorical ways. Relationships are shaped by friendship, status, gender norms, peer expectations and evolving emotions. Decisions that appear straightforward in a classroom discussion often become far more complex in lived experience.
This complexity is reflected beyond schools. Criminal justice responses themselves are rarely straightforward. Some incidents lead to prosecution, others to diversionary outcomes or no further action. Our research found that lengthy investigations could themselves become deeply disruptive and distressing for all young people involved, affecting education, friendships, wellbeing and identity. Sometimes criminal justice intervention may be appropriate, but safeguarding does not end with a referral to police. As KCSIE identifies, schools retain an important educational and relational responsibility throughout the process.
Our research also highlighted the importance of communication. Participants frequently described a disconnect between the actions schools took in response to reports and what young people perceived to have happened. Much of the work undertaken by safeguarding leads – including risk assessment, multi-agency liaison and ongoing support – necessarily takes place behind the scenes and cannot always be communicated in detail. As a result, young people may conclude that little or no action has been taken, reinforcing perceptions that reporting ‘doesn’t make a difference.’ This challenge can be particularly acute where police are involved. Decisions to take no further action may be interpreted by peers as evidence that ‘nothing happened’ or that allegations were unfounded, rather than reflecting the evidential thresholds that govern criminal justice decision-making. Without careful communication, these perceptions risk undermining confidence in reporting and in safeguarding processes more broadly, as well as heightening division in peer cultures.
This is why prevention cannot be reduced to ensuring that pupils know the rules or that schools adopt a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach. Young people also need opportunities to develop the relational, emotional and ethical capacities that enable them to navigate situations that are uncertain, socially pressured or emotionally charged before they escalate into harm.
Looking beyond procedures
One way of understanding this is through the Three Domains of safeguarding practice:
- Production
- Explanation, and
- Aesthetics.
Together, these domains remind us that effective safeguarding depends on more than following procedures. While originally developed in alternative contexts, our research with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation identified the applicability of this framework to harmful sexual behaviour.
The production domain is where statutory guidance, perhaps understandably, focuses most of its attention. It concerns policies, reporting pathways, referrals, information sharing and accountability. KCSIE aims to provide schools with a robust framework for these responsibilities. Without strong production, safeguarding can become inconsistent and staff can feel uncertain.
However, effective safeguarding also depends on the explanation domain. This involves developing richer understandings of behaviour rather than simply categorising it. It asks what meanings young people attach to their actions, what social and relational pressures are operating, and how schools can learn from incidents rather than treating them as isolated events. This is particularly important in cases of harmful sexual behaviour, where incidents often emerge from broader peer norms, gender expectations and digital cultures rather than from individual pathology alone.
For instance, our research found that staff were often less uncertain about procedures than about meaning. Was this coercion or experimentation? Was there pressure that was never verbalised? What role had peers, digital technologies or gender norms played? What barriers were in place that prevented the student from disclosing earlier?
These are explanatory questions that cannot be answered through policy alone. Instead, schools that remain only within the production domain risk responding to incidents without ever understanding why they happened or how similar harms might be prevented. Safeguarding can, in turn, become dominated by top-down, reactive corrective measures: new policies, legal messaging, zero-tolerance approaches or assemblies reminding pupils of expected behaviour. Yet these interventions are unlikely to address the relational, social and cultural conditions from which harmful sexual behaviour emerges. While they may achieve surface-level compliance, they will likely leave the underlying norms and dynamics untouched.
Finally, the aesthetic domain – not aesthetics in the artistic sense, but the lived experience of safeguarding. How does it feel to disclose? Do young people expect to be believed? Are they treated with dignity? Does the response generate trust, or fear? Does it reduce shame, or inadvertently reinforce it? These questions are rarely addressed explicitly in policy documents, yet they may be among the most important determinants of whether young people seek help in the future.
Consider image-sharing education. Schools often communicate messages such as “once it’s online it’s there forever”, “don’t send images” or “your reputation could be destroyed”. These messages are usually well-intentioned and designed to prevent harm. Yet our research has found that they may also have unintended consequences. Young people may come to believe that if they have shared an image that they have already made an irreversible mistake, that disclosure will simply confirm their regret and shame or that adults will focus primarily on what they should not have done or worse, that there is no point in reporting because once it is leaked, there is nothing anyone can do and the situation is hopeless (something that we have critiqued previously regarding the updated government guidance for RSHE). In these circumstances, safeguarding messages intended to prevent harm may increase silence, shame and delayed disclosure.
The aesthetic domain involves asking different questions about the messages young people receive and their experience of safeguarding:
- What does safeguarding feel like?
- Does it communicate dignity?
- Does it reduce shame?
- Does it make disclosure easier next time?
- Are outcomes communicated clearly?
When in balance, the three domains shift safeguarding from a model centred solely on incident management towards one concerned with relationships, learning and culture. They invite schools to ask not only whether procedures were followed, but what those procedures taught the wider school community about trust, accountability and care.
From compliance to curiosity
One of the most striking aspects of KCSIE 2026 is its repeated emphasis on professional curiosity. The guidance reminds practitioners that children may not recognise their experiences as harmful, may be reluctant to disclose or may communicate concerns indirectly. Staff are encouraged to remain curious, build trusted relationships and avoid making assumptions too quickly. This represents an important shift in safeguarding practice and highlights the importance of the aesthetic domain of safeguarding.
Yet professional curiosity is not simply an individual skill; it is a way of thinking about safeguarding. It requires schools to hold two things together simultaneously. On the one hand, adults must act decisively when concerns arise. KCSIE states that children deserve protection, statutory responsibilities must be fulfilled, and harmful behaviour must never be minimised. On the other hand, practitioners also need space to ask questions before rushing to explanation: What pressures shaped this behaviour? How are those involved making sense of what has happened? What wider peer or school cultures may have contributed? What support does each young person now need?
Balancing the three domains requires more than good intentions. It requires a professional stance that can hold procedural clarity alongside interpretive openness. This is precisely what we mean by safe uncertainty. Safe uncertainty does not mean uncertainty about safeguarding responsibilities. Schools should be absolutely certain about their duty to protect children, challenge harmful behaviour and respond proportionately. Rather, safe uncertainty concerns remaining open and curious about understanding. It resists the temptation to collapse complex situations into simple categories before the relational, social and developmental context has been explored. It acknowledges that adolescence is inherently messy. It is characterised by rapid developmental change, evolving friendships and intimacies, emotional (dis)regulation, competing social pressures, and fluid peer norms and hierarchies that are often complex and confusing to navigate. Our role as trusted adults is not to eliminate that uncertainty, but to hold it safely while supporting young people to make sense of it.
For harmful sexual behaviour, a safe uncertainty approach offers an important corrective. There is a risk that within safeguarding that certainty is sought through labels: victim and perpetrator, appropriate and inappropriate, consensual and non-consensual, online and offline. Yet these categories do not always explain the complexities of why incidents occur, why they escalate, the nature of young people’s experiences and involvement in incidents, nor how future harm can be prevented. Prevention depends not only on identifying what happened but on understanding the conditions that made it possible.
Towards a culture of preventative safeguarding
Preventative safeguarding is therefore not simply about preventing the next incident. It is about creating the relational conditions in which young people, communities and staff can recognise uncertainty, seek help earlier, challenge harmful norms and learn together. KCSIE 2026 provides a statutory framework for this work. The next step is ensuring that our safeguarding cultures are as thoughtful and relational as our safeguarding procedures.
Translating KCSIE into everyday school life cannot be achieved through policies alone. Nor can it be achieved simply by strengthening messages about the law, adopting increasingly punitive responses or expecting young people to navigate complex relationships through binary categories of right and wrong. These approaches provide important clarity, but clarity alone is rarely enough to prepare young people for the realities of their social worlds.
Our research has consistently shown that safeguarding is shaped by culture. The messages communicated through RSHE, the way that adults model emotional literacy and regulation, the way they respond to difficult disclosures, the assumptions schools make about harmful sexual behaviour and the ways incidents are discussed within school communities all contribute to young people’s understanding of whether schools are places of trust, judgement, support or shame. These experiences shape not only how incidents are managed today, but whether young people seek help tomorrow.
Preventative safeguarding therefore asks schools to think beyond compliance. It invites us to consider how we build cultures where young people feel able to ask difficult questions, disclose concerns early, challenge harmful peer norms and learn from mistakes without fear of immediate judgement. This is not about replacing accountability with dialogue or weakening safeguarding through uncertainty. Rather, it is about recognising that accountability, learning and relational support are most effective when they work together.
Ultimately, safeguarding is not only something schools do after harm has occurred. It is something schools teach every day. Every response to harmful sexual behaviour sends a message about relationships, responsibility, justice and care. If we want schools to prevent harm, we must pay as much attention to those messages as we do to the procedures that follow them.