The single central record

What the single central record is, and who must keep one

Keeping children safe in education 2026 (KCSIE), the statutory guidance in force from 1 September 2026, puts it in one sentence at paragraph 347: schools and colleges "must maintain a single central record of pre-appointment checks, referred to in the Regulations as 'the register' and more commonly known as 'the single central record'". SCR stands for nothing more mysterious than that. Older editions called it the single central record of recruitment and vetting checks, and some schools still say single central register; the Regulations say "the register". It is one register, held centrally, showing that the recruitment and vetting checks the law requires were made on each member of staff before they started, and when.

The duty comes from regulations rather than from the guidance itself. Schools and colleges must maintain the SCR whatever their type. For LA maintained schools the duty sits in the School Staffing (England) Regulations 2009; for independent schools, academies and free schools in the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014; for further education colleges in the Further Education (Providers of Education) (England) Regulations 2006; and for non-maintained special schools in their own 2015 regulations. Pupil referral units are brought in by their own application order. KCSIE's footnote lists all of them, which is why the same document applies to a village primary, a sixth-form college and a thirty-academy trust. 16 to 19 academies, special post-16 institutions and independent training providers are told that they should maintain one too, on the same model.

The record exists to prove that safer recruitment happened. The checks it lists are the mandatory pre-appointment checks at paragraph 313 of KCSIE: identity, an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list information for anyone in regulated activity with children, a separate barred list check if the person starts before the certificate arrives, mental and physical fitness, right to work in the UK, further checks for anyone who has lived or worked outside the UK, and professional qualifications where the role needs them; with a prohibition check for teaching work and a section 128 check for management positions in independent schools, academies and free schools. The SCR does not replace those checks and it does not hold the evidence for them. It is the index that says each one was done, for everyone working at the school or college in a role that brings them into regular contact with children.

Two things follow from that. The SCR is a record of checks, not a store of certificates: KCSIE is explicit at paragraph 357 that schools and colleges "do not have to keep copies of DBS certificates, in order to fulfil the duty of maintaining the single central record". And it is a living register rather than a file: a person's details "should be removed from the single central record once they no longer work at the school or college" (paragraph 351). A register that still lists last year's leavers is as wrong as one that omits this term's starters.

Who must be on it, and who need not be

Paragraph 348 sets out who the single central record must cover, and the list is broader than "employees". The test is not the contract but the work: anyone working at the school or college in a role with contact with children is checked, and everyone paragraph 348 names is included in the SCR.

• For schools, all staff, including teacher trainees on salaried routes, and agency and third-party supply staff, "even if they work for one day". The one-day rule is the one most often missed: a supply teacher covering a single Friday must be on the record before that Friday.
• For colleges, details of staff, including agency and supply staff, providing education to children under the age of 18.
• For independent schools, all members of the proprietor body. In an academy or free school that means the members and trustees of the academy trust, who are checked and recorded even though they are not employees.

Agency and third-party staff are recorded differently from employees. Paragraph 364 requires the school or college to "obtain written notification" from the agency that it has carried out the same checks the school would otherwise perform, and for the enhanced DBS check specifically, written notification that the certificate has been obtained by the employment business. Paragraph 349 then says what the record must show for them: "whether written confirmation has been received that the employment business supplying the member of supply staff has carried out the relevant checks and obtained the appropriate certificates, the date this confirmation was received and whether details of any enhanced DBS certificate have been provided". Where an agency's certificate disclosed anything, the school must obtain a copy from the agency (paragraph 365), and paragraph 367 adds the check that is easiest to forget on a wet Monday morning: that "the person presenting themselves for work is the same person on whom the checks have been made".

Some people are checked but need not be on the register. Fee-funded trainee teachers are checked by their training provider; paragraph 376 says "there is no requirement for the school or college to record details of fee-funded trainees on the single central record", though they may be recorded as non-statutory information. Governors in maintained schools must have an enhanced DBS check, and schools should also make a section 128 check for governors, but paragraph 393 says there is "no requirement for schools to record this information on the single central record, but they can if they choose to". Contractors' checks are set out in the contract with the contractor rather than on the register. Volunteers are dealt with next, because 2026 changed the answer.

The list of non-statutory information at paragraph 352 is worth reading as a recommendation rather than a permission. Schools and colleges "are free to record any other information they deem relevant": whether relevant staff have been told of their duty to disclose under the childcare disqualification arrangements, checks made on volunteers, checks made on governors, the dates of safeguarding and safer recruitment training, and "the name of the person who carried out each check". That last one costs a column and answers the question every inspector eventually asks.

Volunteers after 1 September 2026

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 changed the definition of regulated activity, and KCSIE 2026 carries the consequence at paragraph 383: any person volunteering in a school or college "in a role that involves teaching, training, instructing or supervising children frequently or on more than 3 days in a 30-day period or overnight is now in regulated activity", and the school or college should obtain an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list information for them. A reading volunteer who comes in every Tuesday and Thursday is in regulated activity, and so are volunteer sports coaches running a club twice a week and a parent helping in the same class every Friday; a parent who helps on one trip a term is not. Paid sports coaches and other staff in regular contact with children were always in scope; the change is that frequent volunteers now sit beside them.

For existing volunteers the guidance is direct. Paragraph 385 says that where a volunteer "will now be in regulated activity from 1 September 2026", the school or college "must check their children's barred list status", by obtaining an enhanced DBS check with children's barred list information, or, where the volunteer is to continue while the certificate is awaited or a recent enhanced check without barred list information exists with no break in service, by a standalone barred list check. Volunteers who meet the three-days-in-thirty condition across several settings can hold one check and share it, and the DBS Update Service is free for volunteers.

For volunteers who are not in regulated activity, the position is the one it has been for years: the school or college decides whether to obtain an enhanced check without barred list information, on the basis of a written risk assessment, and paragraph 390 says "details of the risk assessment should be recorded". Paragraph 387 is absolute: "under no circumstances" should a volunteer on whom no checks have been obtained be left to work unsupervised or engage in regulated activity.

None of this makes the SCR statutory for volunteers. It does mean that most schools will have made a new set of checks this term, and that the sensible place to show an inspector that the 1 September exercise happened is a volunteers' section of the same register, with volunteers added to the SCR under the same columns: which check, the date, and who made it. A school that recorded the risk assessment for each unchecked volunteer, and the barred list check for each newly regulated one, has an answer to the first question of the autumn.

What the record must show for each person

Paragraph 350 is the core of the requirement, and it is the same for primary and secondary schools and for colleges. KCSIE states that the SCR "must indicate whether the following checks have been carried out or certificates obtained, and the date on which each check was completed or certificate obtained":

1. An identity check. KCSIE points to the identification checking guidelines on GOV.UK, and notes the possibility of a person having changed their name.
2. A standalone children's barred list check, where one was made because the person started in regulated activity before the DBS certificate was available.
3. An enhanced DBS check with children's barred list check, "requested/certificate provided". The Disclosure and Barring Service issues the certificate to the applicant; the SCR shows that it was seen, not what it said.
4. A prohibition from teaching check, for anyone employed to carry out teaching work, made through the DfE's Check a teacher's record service.
5. Further checks on people who have lived or worked outside the UK, whatever the school or college considered appropriate under paragraphs 359 to 363.
6. A check of professional qualifications, where required, for example qualified teacher status and the completion of induction.
7. A check to establish the person's right to work in the United Kingdom.

In addition, colleges must record whether the person's position involves "relevant activity", that is regularly caring for, training, supervising or being solely in charge of persons under 18; and independent schools, including academies and free schools, must record details of the section 128 checks made for those in management positions. Independent schools and non-maintained special schools should also record the date any certificate was obtained.

Two things the list does not require are often added and often wrong. The record does not need the DBS certificate number, and it must not hold what a certificate disclosed. Where a certificate showed something and the school decided to appoint, the reasoning belongs in a restricted file with a named owner; the register shows the check, the date and the decision. Our DBS record-keeping guide covers the six-month limit on any copy of a certificate and what may be kept once it is destroyed. And the register does not need copies of passports, right-to-work documents or qualification certificates: paragraph 355 says those copies "should be kept on their personnel file", which is a different place with a different access list.

The date column is the requirement, not a nicety. "Check made" without a date cannot show that the check preceded the start date, and the start date is the fact the whole register turns on. A register that records the identity check on the day the person arrived, the barred list check the day before, and the DBS certificate three weeks later with the standalone check bridging the gap tells a coherent story. One that shows a tick in every column and a single date for all of them tells the inspector the row was completed from memory.

Paper or electronic, one record or many, and when a row comes off

"The single central record can be kept in paper or electronic form" (paragraph 353). A spreadsheet is fine; a purchased SCR product is fine; a bound book is fine. What matters is that there is one of it, that it is complete for everyone in paragraph 348, and that the people who need to see it can. There is no approved template. The columns in this guide are the ones the guidance names, and an SCR template that adds thirty more is not more compliant, only harder to keep current.

Multi-academy trusts have their own paragraph, and MATs must maintain the SCR for every academy they run: a MAT "must maintain the single central record detailing checks carried out in each academy within the MAT" (paragraph 354). The trust need not keep a separate register per school, but "the information should be recorded in such a way that allows for details for each individual academy to be provided separately, and without delay, to those entitled to inspect that information, including by inspectors". In practice that means a filter that produces one academy's staff on demand, a central HR team that knows the record is theirs to answer for, and headteachers who can still open it on the morning an inspector arrives at their gate.

Removal is part of maintenance. When someone leaves, their line comes off the current register (paragraph 351). What happens to that line afterwards is a records-retention decision, not a safeguarding one: the DfE's record-keeping guidance and the school's retention schedule govern how long the evidence that a check was made is held after employment ends, and it is held on the personnel file, not on the live record. Our school records guide covers the retention schedule.

Ownership needs a name. The SCR is usually kept by the school business manager, an HR officer or, in a trust, a central team; the headteacher, the senior leadership team and the governing body remain accountable for it, and staff and governors alike should know who maintains the SCR and who audits it. Whoever holds it should know that they hold a document an inspector will read against the staff list, the timetable and the agency invoices, and that the three of those together are what "complete" means.

What an inspector checks, and the gaps found first

An Ofsted inspection includes the SCR. Inspectors ask to view the record as part of checking safer recruitment, usually on the first morning and usually against the current staff list, and a local authority safeguarding audit will ask for it in the same way. The independent schools inspectorates do the same. Their interest is not the neatness of the spreadsheet but whether the school can show that every adult working with children was checked before they started, and that someone knows the record well enough to explain each entry.

A missing entry does not by itself make safeguarding ineffective. Ofsted's approach for years has been that an administrative error which the school can put right during the inspection is recorded as such, and the school is asked to correct it. A pattern is different: a register that omits agency staff as a class, that has no dates, that shows people in regulated activity who started before any barred list check, or that nobody in the leadership team can explain, is evidence about the school's safeguarding culture rather than about its filing.

The gaps that turn up most often are predictable, which is why a termly audit of the SCR against the list below is worth an hour, and why many schools and academies now include it in the safeguarding audit the governing body receives.

• Agency and supply staff missing, or recorded without the date the agency's written confirmation was received, or recorded on the day the invoice arrived rather than before the first day worked.
• No dates, or one date copied across every column.
• Starts before the certificate with no standalone barred list check to bridge the gap.
• Prohibition checks not made for teaching staff, including cover supervisors and HLTAs where the role is teaching work, and section 128 checks blank for management positions in academies and free schools.
• Overseas checks left blank for someone whose application form shows years abroad, with no note of what the school decided was appropriate.
• Trustees and members not on the record in an academy trust, because the register was built for employees.
• Leavers still listed, and current staff on a second, older spreadsheet that was never merged.
• Nobody's name against the checks, so that the question "who saw the passport?" has no answer.

The fix for all of them is the same: a row with the person, the role, the start date, each of the seven checks with its date, the agency confirmation where relevant, and the name of the person who made each check; kept by someone who knows it is theirs; audited each term by someone who is not that person. It is an hour a term against the risk of a first morning spent reconstructing who saw what.

"Can she start Monday?" – the decision that never reaches the register

Most single central record failures do not begin in the spreadsheet. They begin in the conversation around a start date. The agency emails the business manager's personal address on a Friday evening to say the checks are done. A head of department messages the office to ask whether the new technician can start on Monday, and the answer, "yes, the barred list check came back clear", is a decision to let someone begin work in regulated activity, taken in a chat and never written anywhere else. A supply teacher's passport is checked at the staffroom door and the fact that it was checked lives only in the memory of the person who held it.

Each of those is a check or a decision that must be recorded on the SCR, and each has instead been recorded somewhere the school does not hold and cannot search. When the inspector asks for the date the agency's confirmation was received, the honest answer is "it will be in someone's inbox".

The fix is not to stop people asking. It is to give the answer somewhere to land: the register row is the answer to "can she start", and a message can say "row updated, she can start Monday" without carrying the certificate, the passport or the decision itself. ComplyChat provides a channel for the work conversations around recruitment and safeguarding, with everyone in it told that it is on the record. On paid plans, the lasting record files into the organisation's own Microsoft 365 once the archive is connected and filing, so the exchange in which someone was cleared to start is producible later without a search of personal phones. It is not a vetting service, it does not make or verify checks, and it is not a place to keep certificates or the register itself. ComplyChat Free is personal messaging with one private group, direct messages and three calendar months of recent history, with no Microsoft 365 archive or Replay; upgrading cannot restore expired history.

A question for the next leadership or governors' meeting: if an inspector took five names from this term's supply invoices and asked for the date each agency confirmation arrived and who saw each person's identity document, would the answer come from the register or from someone's messages?

Official guidance and your next step

The primary source is Part three, the guidance on safer recruitment, of Keeping children safe in education 2026: paragraph 313 for the pre-appointment checks, paragraphs 347 to 357 for the record itself, 364 to 367 for agency and third-party staff, 374 to 376 for trainee teachers, 383 to 390 for volunteers and 391 to 393 for governors. Paragraph numbers and quotations are from the edition published on 1 September 2026; the DfE renumbers each year, so check the current edition before citing a paragraph to a colleague. The DBS code of practice on handling certificate information governs what may be kept about a certificate, and the DfE's record-keeping guidance for schools covers retention after someone leaves.

This guide is a practical starting point for schools and colleges in England, not legal advice about an individual, a check or a disputed appointment. Have the people responsible for safer recruitment review it against your own register, and have your designated safeguarding lead read the volunteers section against this term's rota.

Then do one thing: open the register, take this term's supply invoices and last month's new starters, and for each name check that the row exists, that every applicable check has its own date, that the date precedes the first day worked, and that a name sits against each check. Fix what you find before buying a template.