What the record has to show #
Keeping children safe in education 2026 came into force on 1 September 2026, replacing previous versions, and Part three covers safer recruitment. Schools must maintain a single central record indicating whether each of the following pre-appointment checks has been carried out or a certificate obtained, and the date each was completed:
- an identity check
- a standalone children's barred list check
- an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list check, requested or certificate provided
- a prohibition from teaching check
- further checks on people who have lived or worked outside the UK
- a check of professional qualifications, where required
- a check to establish the person's right to work in the United Kingdom
The record must cover all staff, including teacher trainees on salaried routes, and agency and third-party supply staff even if they work for one day.
For agency staff the school must record whether written confirmation has been received that the employment business carried out the relevant checks and obtained the appropriate certificates, the date that confirmation was received, and whether enhanced DBS certificate details have been provided. Details must be removed once a person no longer works at the school.
The guidance also lists information schools may record but are not required to: whether staff have been told of their duty to disclose under the childcare disqualification arrangements, checks on volunteers, checks on governors, dates of safeguarding and safer recruitment training, and the name of the person who carried out each check. Most schools record several of these, and most do it in a separate place from the statutory record.
Why one appointment takes so long #
The checks themselves are not the bottleneck. The bottleneck is that each one is a request to a third party with its own turnaround, its own reference number and its own way of telling you it has finished.
So somebody holds a mental model of where every candidate is, chases the ones that have stalled, and produces the state of play whenever the head asks. When that person is on leave, the school genuinely does not know where a candidate has got to.
Which parts run on rules #
The tracking, and nothing but the tracking. Everything else here is a safeguarding decision and belongs to a trained person. KCSIE is explicit that safer recruitment is not just about carrying out the right DBS checks.
The tracking
- One row per candidate, one column per check, a status and a date in every cell
- A rule about what is overdue, and a reminder that goes out without anybody remembering to send it
- Producing the single central record as an output of that rather than as a second document maintained alongside it
- Flagging where a start date is approaching and a check is not complete
All of that has a fixed trigger, fixed steps and a fixed output.
The safeguarding decision
- Whether a gap in an employment history is satisfactorily explained
- Whether a reference is evasive
- Whether a candidate's account of why they left holds together
- Who sits on the panel and whether they have had safer recruitment training
None of that is clerical and none of it should ever be handed to a system.
The data question #
Recruitment files contain criminal records information, immigration status and references. The school is the controller. Retention is not optional and is not indefinite: KCSIE requires removal from the single central record once a person leaves, and the wider file has its own retention rules. Any system that holds this data is a processor acting on the school's instructions, and where it sits is a decision to make and record before it is made by default.
If the question behind this page is whether to add a person or change a process, the true cost of an employee calculator gives you one side of it. The closest sibling page is cover for absent teachers, because supply staff are where recruitment paperwork and daily operations collide.