KCSIE 2026 does not require an AI policy. Here is a free way to write a good one anyway.

Nothing in Keeping children safe in education 2026 requires a school to have an AI policy. Ofsted's inspection information for this year says there is no expectation that a school uses AI at all, and that what inspectors look at is "the quality of decision-making about AI". The DfE says schools and colleges are free to make their own choices about the most suitable uses of generative AI in their settings.

So a policy is not a duty. It is where the decisions get written down, which is why most schools want one and few have the week it takes.

The policy builder on schoolaigovernance.co.uk asks ten questions about the school as it is today: the phase, single school or trust, exam centre or not, how staff may use AI, how pupils may, which platform the school runs on, how far along it is, whether there is an Approved Tools Register yet, who holds data protection, and whether governors have been briefed. Each answer picks the wording for one part of a thirteen-section policy.

No AI writes any of it. Every clause is fixed, human-written text from a checked library, citing the guidance it rests on, and the same answers always give the same policy. The answers live in the link, so a colleague can open the same draft, and next September the school can rebuild the policy from the newest library once the new KCSIE lands.

The draft appears on the page as the questions are answered, and downloads as a Word file with every fill-in highlighted, or prints to PDF. Reading, building and downloading are free with no account. A free sign-in does one thing: it fills in the brackets on the page, keeps the copy, and says when the guidance behind it changes.

What the builder does not do is make the decisions. Whether pupils may use AI in lessons, who approves a new tool and how the school treats assessed work are the school's calls. The builder's job is to make sure each one is made on purpose and written in words a governor can read.

Start here: https://schoolaigovernance.co.uk/policy-builder

The policy's Appendix A, the Approved Tools Register, is also a template on its own: https://schoolaigovernance.co.uk/templates/approved-tools-register

Wes Akram is an exams officer, data manager and DPO at a secondary school, and the author of The School AI Governance Handbook: for the slightly overwhelmed. Everything on schoolaigovernance.co.uk is free.