Deepfakes, genAI and phone bans: How England’s latest safeguarding standards offer a blueprint for schools globally
Next week, the statutory guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 comes into force across England. The updated framework outlines updated legal safeguarding duties for all staff working with children under 18.
The update has a renewed focus on digital risks, now including harmful AI-generated imagery and safety expectations for generative AI tools.
So what exactly does this mean for schools globally? Below I've picked out some key pieces of guidance from this crucial document and how educators and school leaders can keep students safe from the very real dangers presented by the rapid advancement of AI.
Nudes and semi-nudes
The updated statutory guidance places a strong expectation on all school staff regarding digital safety.
A significant update in KCSIE 2026 is the streamlined language used around digital imagery. The guidance moves away from terms like "indecent" or "sexual" imagery to consistently adopt the term "nudes and semi-nudes".
All staff should have an awareness of safeguarding issues that can put children at risk of harm including consensual and non-consensual making or sharing of nudes or seminudes.
Critically, the scope of digital imagery has expanded to cover modern technological risks, explicitly highlighting:
Digitally altered images
Entirely AI-generated content (often referred to as 'deepfakes')
Every incident involving nude or semi-nude content requires a formal safeguarding response. However, the DfE stresses that responses must remain proportionate, taking into account:
Age
Developmental stage
Specific circumstances of the children involved
Any underlying factors of coercion, exploitation, or vulnerability.
The guidance also highlights that harmful digital imagery can involve peer-to-peer sharing, stating:
Child-on-child abuse is most likely to include, but may not be limited to consensual and non-consensual making or sharing of nudes and seminudes
Childline/IWF provides a free tool, Report Remove, for children to report nude or sexual images and/or videos of themselves that they think might have been shared online.
Safe and effective use of Generative AI in education
While the guidance tackles AI-enabled risks like deepfakes, it also recognises that Generative AI is increasingly being used in classrooms and for administrative tasks. The key takeaway for schools is balance: promoting innovation while remaining fully compliant with data protection, online safety, and filtering expectations.
Schools are expected to understand the legal and operational implications of adopting AI tools, ranging from data privacy and intellectual property to pupil age restrictions.
But rather than leaving staff to navigate AI independently, the guidance actively points out practical tools designed to build AI literacy among staff:
Guidance to support schools to understand safety considerations and legal responsibilities of using Generative AI can be found at Generative artificial intelligence in education.
To complement this, the department, in partnership with the Chiltern Learning Trust and Chartered College of Teaching, have published online resources to help school and college staff to use AI safely and effectively.
These free resources offer staff clear support on prompt safety, reducing workload safely, and understanding where AI tool outputs need human oversight.
Mobile phone-free environments
KCSIE 2026 reinforces the DfE’s firm baseline position on personal devices in schools. The default expectation is now unambiguous: student mobile phones should not be accessible during the school day.
All schools should be mobile phone-free environments by default; anything other than this should be by exception only. Examples of how schools have become mobile free are available from Creating a mobile phone-free environment: school case studies.
Allowing devices is now strictly an exception requiring documented justification, such as medical monitoring needs. Restricting phones serves as a key safeguarding measure to reduce cyberbullying, non-consensual image capture, and digital distractions.
Cybersecurity
KCSIE 2026 makes it clear that protecting children online extends directly to securing the digital infrastructure of education settings:
Governing bodies and proprietors should take measures to safeguard children by protecting personal information and ensuring their school or college has appropriate cyber security systems in place. They should consider implementing measures in line with the Cyber security standards for schools and colleges.
Robust cyber resilience is now explicitly treated as a core safeguarding obligation rather than just an IT concern. School leaders and governors are expected to audit their technical controls, staff training, and data protection practices against DfE standards to prevent ransomware, data breaches, and unauthorised system access.
Final Thoughts
While KCSIE 2026 is guidance specifically for schools in England, its core message carries weight globally: technology is evolving rapidly, and safeguarding policies must adapt alongside it. Whether it is managing the rise of deepfakes, establishing safe AI practices, enforcing phone-free environments, or tightening cyber security, protecting students today requires proactive digital strategy.
By updating staff awareness, implementing clear boundaries, and treating digital safety as a core priority, schools everywhere can build an environment where technology enhances learning without compromising child welfare.
