KCSIE 2026: What the Removal of Annex A Means for Your September INSET

One of the most significant practical changes in KCSIE 2026 is one that's easy to miss in a document full of high-profile updates. Annex A, the condensed summary of Part One that many schools have relied on for years as a shortcut for staff reading, is gone. From September 2026, every member of staff in your school will be required to read the full Part One of Keeping Children Safe in Education.

For DSLs and headteachers planning September INSET, this changes things. Here's what you need to know and what to do about it.

What was Annex A and why does its removal matter?

Annex A was a shorter, condensed version of Part One, designed to give staff a more accessible entry point to the statutory guidance without reading the full document. For many schools, it became standard practice to ask staff to read Annex A at the start of the academic year, rather than the full Part One, and to use that as the basis for their evidence of annual safeguarding reading.

KCSIE 2026 removes this option. The condensed summary no longer exists in the guidance, meaning schools can no longer ask staff to sign off having read Annex A. All staff must now read Part One in full.

This isn't a small administrative tweak. Part One of KCSIE covers a significant amount of ground, the full range of safeguarding responsibilities, types of abuse and neglect, specific safeguarding issues such as county lines, online harms and child-on-child abuse, early help expectations and how concerns should be reported and escalated. The expectation is that every member of staff, not just DSLs and leaders, reads and understands all of it.

What does this mean for your INSET planning?

The removal of Annex A has two practical implications for September INSET.

The first is about the reading requirement itself. You will need to build in time for all staff to read Part One of KCSIE 2026 before or during your September INSET, and you will need a clear mechanism for evidencing that this has happened. Whether that's a read receipt, a staff sign-off sheet or a recorded acknowledgement will depend on how your school typically approaches this, but the expectation is clear: reading happened, and you can show it.

The second implication is for how you structure your actual training. Annex A was shorter and more focused, which meant many schools built their INSET training around it as a foundation and then added supplementary content. Without it, your starting point is the full Part One, which is longer and covers more ground. That doesn't mean INSET needs to get longer, but it does mean your training content needs to be genuinely comprehensive and aligned to the full Part One text, not a summarised version of it.

What should your September safeguarding training cover?

Even before the removal of Annex A, best-practice September safeguarding INSET covered far more than the statutory minimum. KCSIE 2026 reinforces that expectation. Staff training should help people understand not just what the guidance says but what it means in practice: how to recognise concerns, how to respond without investigating themselves, what to record, how to pass concerns on and what to do if they're worried a concern isn't being taken seriously.

KCSIE 2026 also introduces a number of significant updates that your September training will need to reflect. The guidance now requires all staff to read Part One in full, as discussed above, but it also includes new and expanded content on mental health and wellbeing, child-on-child abuse and misogyny, AI-generated intimate images and deepfakes, and the safeguarding implications of gender-questioning pupils. These aren't optional extras for your INSET, they're part of the statutory guidance all staff will have just read and will be expecting to understand.

Our KCSIE 2026 Annual Safeguarding Refresher Training Pack is built around the full Part One of KCSIE 2026 and covers all of the key safeguarding responsibilities, abuse types and new 2026 content your staff need to understand. It includes an editable PowerPoint, built-in discussion points and scenarios, a full staff quiz, log sheets and facilitator notes so that whoever delivers the session has everything they need to run it confidently.

It's a one-off purchase with instant download, so you can have it ready to adapt and deliver well before September. 

Find out more about the KCSIE 2026 Annual Safeguarding Refresher Training Pack here.

What about schools that have existing training in place?

If you already have a tried and trusted safeguarding INSET structure, you don't need to start from scratch. What you do need to do is check it against KCSIE 2026 before September and make sure it covers the full scope of Part One, including the new content introduced this year.

The key questions to ask are: does your training reflect what's actually in the 2026 guidance, including the new sections? Does it go beyond reading the document and help staff apply it to realistic situations? And do you have a clear way of recording that all staff have both read Part One and attended appropriate training?

If any of those answers are uncertain, now is the time to address it, not in the week before term starts.