Safeguarding, Foreseeable Harm, and the Climate Crisis: Why ITT Providers Must Respond to the KCSIE Consultation

Kit Rackley – Secondary Geography Associate Consultant

Initial Teacher Training providers play a critical role in shaping safeguarding understanding, professional judgement, and anticipatory practice across the education system.

The current consultation on updates to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) proposes changes on AI, mental health, information sharing, and gender questioning pupils — yet climate change is entirely absent, despite being one of the most well‑evidenced, foreseeable, and system‑level sources of harm affecting children’s welfare.

Safeguarding policy is explicitly grounded in foreseeability, cumulative risk, and context. Climate change meets every one of these thresholds:

• It intensifies poverty, crisis, exploitation, absence and distress
• It contributes to eco‑anxiety, disrupted attendance, behavioural change, and moral injury in young people
• It creates safeguarding pressures that ITT trainees are already encountering in placements — without any formal framework or recognition

ITT providers are already preparing new teachers to exercise professional judgement in complex, evolving safeguarding landscapes. Current guidance implicitly relies on that judgement while failing to acknowledge climate‑related harm, leaving trainees under‑prepared and institutions unsupported.

This consultation is a rare opportunity for NASBTT members to respond collectively and professionally, not politically, and to argue for:

• Explicit recognition of climate change as a safeguarding context
• Alignment between safeguarding guidance and national risk assessments
• Support for schools and ITT providers in addressing climate‑related distress honestly and proportionately
• Coherence between safeguarding policy and the realities trainees observe in schools

Responding does not require new ideology or additional burden — it requires safeguarding guidance that reflects the world children are growing up in, and the professional responsibilities educators already hold.

Safeguarding has never been only about reacting.
It has always been about noticing what is already charging.

Read the full rationale and consultation guidance.
Consultation deadline: Wednesday, 22nd April 2026