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SP21

School monitoring and filtering systems guidance

Southport Inquiry · The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · Issued 13 April 2026 · Addressed to: Department for Education

Government responseDepartment for Education: Accepted (Jul 2026)

DeliveryNo statement from Department for Education found

Recommendation, verbatim from the inquiry

●Inquiry recommendation

The Department for Education should review and strengthen its guidance to schools on monitoring and filtering systems, including ensuring that the systems used are appropriate and adequate from a technical perspective. The department should ensure schools understand these requirements and consider whether inspections by Ofsted should play a greater role in monitoring compliance.

Southport Inquiry, The Southport Inquiry Report: Phase 1 · 13 Apr 2026 Source PDF →

Published evidence summary

AI-generated evidence summary

In July 2026, HM Government reported that the Department for Education expects to complete implementation of the recommendation in mid-2027 (Home Office response, Jul 2026). It outlined next steps including proposed updates to Keeping Children Safe in Education for the 2026 to 2027 academic year, a 2026 consultation on a product certification scheme, and incorporating confirmation of annual checks into inspections from September 2027 (Home Office response, Jul 2026). The record holds no update since the government's response of July 2026 (Home Office response, Jul 2026).

Sources

AI-generated summary of the record on this page, checked by a second model and automatic checks, 26 Sep 2026.

Report-level response context

The government's response to Phase 1 (CP 1623, 2 July 2026) agreed with all 67 recommendations in one sentence, and names only 39 of them individually. Where a recommendation is not named, the response shown is the passage the response gives for the group it belongs to (the recommendations for organisations outside central government, or the recommendations to policing bodies), which is not a response to that recommendation alone; the response does not list the members of any group. The 10 recommendations for Phase 2 of the Inquiry to consider show no response: the response introduces them (paragraph 20) but answers none of them. The government accepts the recommendations that are for central government to deliver. Where a recommendation is for an organisation outside central government, the government's agreement is not that organisation's acceptance.

Government response

●Department for Education · Accepted · 2 Jul 2026

Words of: HM Government, Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry (CP 1623), presented to Parliament by the Home Secretary, 2 July 2026

The Department for Education (DfE) is the lead department and expects to complete implementation of this recommendation in mid-2027. Progress and next steps:
- DfE has proposed an update to Keeping Children Safe in Education for the academic year 2026–27 to strengthen the expectation that education settings review and check filtering systems at least annually.
- From September 2027, confirmation that schools have completed an annual check will form part of inspections.
- A consultation on a certification scheme - to provide assurance to schools on filtering and monitoring products that align with the filtering and monitoring standards that DfE published in 2023 and references in Keeping Children Safe in Education - will take place this year (2026).

Extract from: Government Response to Phase 1 of the Southport Inquiry

Delivery

No statement on delivery from Department for Education has been found in the sources searched. This is separate from the response above.

How this page is built

The recommendation and the government responses are verbatim from primary documents. Delivery statements and other bodies' findings are shown in their own words, each with its source. The summary is written by this site and labelled as such. The Index does not paraphrase sources or characterise intent; it records what has been published.