The single central record, or register, is a store of information where institutions record details of staff pre-employment checks in order to comply with safer recruitment standards.

It is up to governing bodies and proprietors to ensure that people who pose a risk of harm are prevented from working with children.

Governing bodies must adhere to statutory regulations and take the necessary decisions on whether to ask for checks that are beyond those required.

Governing bodies must act reasonably in reaching decisions on the suitability of the prospective staff member based on checks carried out and the evidence produced, as well as interview information and references. Which checks are required is based on the staff role and duties involved.

The Department for Education outlines details of which checks are necessary in their document, Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE), which normally gets updated once a year.

During these updates, they add new checks, change guidance or edit existing wording, in order to ensure better clarity for school managers in charge of the pre-employment checks.

The KCSiE document informs us all of what checks are statutory, and also suggests processes that are non-statutory (but advised for good school practice).

Our guides will cover these checks, and outline what is statutory to include on the Single Central Record (SCR).

Our guides will try to clearly explain instances where this happens, but we must stress it is mainly relevant to what you must keep on your Single Central Record.

We urge you to read the entirety of the DfE’s KCSiE, and stress that our guides are our attempt to help you make sense of the relevant regulations – and not meant to act as a replacement for the KCSiE.

Our guides set out to help explain why pre-appointment checks are carried out, to help you achieve effective safeguarding. We understand that if you’re in a hurry, you’ll need a shortened version – look out for “Your checklist” which condenses what you need to carry out within each section.

Please also refer to the School Staffing Regulations and other legal frameworks that underpin the guidance and further illuminate what is written in the KCSiE.

If you disagree with any part of this guide, please refer back to the KCSiE, and please do get in touch with us to suggest any changes.

It is your statutory duty to record checks carried out for all members of staff that are directly employed by your organisation, who work at your school.

This includes teacher trainees on salaried routes, agency and third-party supply staff.

Specific key differences to note:

You should keep records of all concerns, evidence, discussions and decisions made, in writing.

You can keep these in hard copy within the personnel file, and online in the Documents Tab on the Sign In Central Record staff member profile.

See Specific Staff Profile Information for detailed discussions of each staff member who needs such pre-appointment checks.

Any offer of appointment made to a successful candidate must be conditional on satisfactory completion of the relevant and necessary pre-employment checks. It is your statutory duty to ensure that any person in regulated activity has been checked against the relevant barred lists before they start employment.

The full legal definition of regulated activity is set out in Schedule 4 of the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, as amended by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and the Crime and Policing Act 2026.

Because this definition is subject to periodic legislative change, always refer to the current version of Keeping Children Safe in Education for the up-to-date legal advice, rather than relying solely on a summary. In broad terms, regulated activity with children covers:

Most of the above only count as regulated activity if carried out frequently (broadly, more than 3 days in a 30-day period, or overnight) — check KCSiE for the exact current thresholds, as these have changed before and may change again.

Terminology of the KCSiE advises that “must” implies a legal requirement to do something, and “should” implies that the advice should be followed unless there is a good reason not to.

In our guides, we explicitly write “it is your statutory duty to ___”, which correlates with the DfE’s “must”.

Where the DfE has written you “should”, we have used similar terminology, or replaced it with we “advise you to___”. We will also refer to this as "best practice" data. This is our attempt to be clear on what your statutory duty is.

Refer to all schools whether maintained, non-maintained or independent schools (including academies, free schools and alternative provision academies), maintained nursery schools and pupil referral units.

Encompasses all under the age of 18.

This relates to the day that an educational institution is visited by Ofsted or The Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). Sign In Central Record caters to both frameworks, and this guide will attempt to ensure that any differences are clearly explained throughout.

This guide sets out to help explain why pre-appointment checks are carried out, to help you achieve effective safeguarding.

We understand that if you’re in a hurry, you’ll need a shortened version – look out for “Your checklist” which condenses what you need to carry out within each section.

Where there are specific instances of differences in terminology, this guide will outline those differences in underlined titles “Specific key differences to note”.

Pay close attention to those if you have specific circumstances or requirements of note.