A five-day work experience placement. An adult showing a Year 10 pupil what to do. Regulated activity?
Schools are being encouraged to expand work experience, build stronger relationships with employers and remove unnecessary barriers to participation. At the same time, schools must make decisions about whether adults working with pre-16 work-experience learners need a DBS certificate, which in turn requires them to understand whether the relevant activity falls within the regulated-activity framework.
On 1 September 2026, one important part of that framework changed: the previous supervision exemption was removed.
For Careers Leaders and Designated Safeguarding Leads, those developments meet in the same place: the work-experience placement.
A Careers Leader may be trying to make it easier for an employer to say yes. A DSL may be asking whether the school has done enough to establish who will be working with the pupil, what they will be doing, whether that activity is regulated activity and, if so, what DBS and barred-list checking is appropriate and legally available.
Both concerns are legitimate.
The difficulty arises when safeguarding caution creates unnecessary barriers for employers, or when pressure to make placements easier leads schools to rely on assumptions that no longer hold.
The answer is not simply to do more checking, or less.
It is to make the regulated-activity decision well.
Work experience is changing too
The familiar model of a Year 10 pupil spending five consecutive days with a single employer is no longer the only model schools are being encouraged to consider.
From September 2026, schools should be reforming their programmes towards two weeks’ worth of work experience across secondary education: work-experience activities in Years 7 to 9 and five days of work-experience placement or placements in Years 10 and 11.
Those Key Stage 4 placements can involve one or more employers and can be spread flexibly across Years 10 and 11.
The experiences should also be meaningful: they should have a clear purpose, involve interaction with employers, allow young people to experience real workplaces and tasks, include feedback, and be supported by preparation and reflection.
But there is an important distinction here.
Meaningful work experience does not necessarily mean that an employer is providing a child with five days of training or instruction.
Preparation can happen before the placement. Reflection can happen afterwards. Learning outcomes can sit within the school’s wider careers programme.
An employer can provide an authentic and valuable experience of work without turning the workplace into a classroom.
That distinction matters when we start asking about regulated activity.
Starting with definitions
Regulated activity is work that a barred person must not do.
It is a legal category. It does not simply mean working with children, and contact with a child does not, by itself, make an adult’s work regulated activity.
There are several ways in which work can constitute regulated activity. For work experience involving children, one particularly relevant category includes:
- teaching, training or instructing children
- caring for or supervising children.
For these specified activities, frequency matters.
The period condition is met when the activity takes place on more than three days in any 30-day period, or overnight between 2am and 6am where there is an opportunity for face-to-face contact with children. The days do not have to be consecutive.
There are other routes by which work can constitute regulated activity, including activities for which no frequency condition applies. This is therefore not a complete definition of regulated activity, but the part of the framework particularly relevant to this discussion.
Work experience and the under-16 distinction
The legislation specifically addresses teaching, training, instruction, care and supervision provided to children in the course of their employment.
For 16- and 17-year-olds, teaching, training, instruction and supervision relating solely to their employment do not constitute regulated activity through this route.
For these provisions, employment is defined broadly and includes unpaid work carried out under the supervision or control of another.
For children under 16, however, the employment exclusion does not apply where the activity is carried out by a person “in respect of whom arrangements exist principally for that purpose.”
That wording deserves attention.
The question is not simply:
Did an employee show the pupil how to do something?
Workplaces are full of explanation, demonstration and incidental instruction. A pupil spending a week in an engineering company might be shown how a machine works, how an invoice is processed or how to use the photocopier. An employee might explain a task and then watch the pupil try it.
It would be easy to see the words training or instruction and conclude that any of those interactions must be regulated activity.
That does not apply the whole statutory test.
The legislation requires attention not only to what happens during the placement, but to the arrangements under which the adult is carrying out that activity.
The statutory question is whether arrangements exist principally for that adult to carry out the relevant activity in relation to the under-16 pupil. The original explanatory notes describe this in terms of the activity being the person’s principal responsibility in relation to the child.
Neither the legislation nor the current DBS guidance provides a detailed workplace test for distinguishing incidental explanation from teaching, training or instruction. The statutory wording and the arrangements surrounding the activity therefore matter.
Two five-day placements
Consider two Year 10 pupils, each spending Monday to Friday with an engineering company.
In the first placement, the pupil experiences different parts of the business. They shadow several employees, observe processes, ask questions, participate in appropriate tasks and receive explanations and feedback along the way.
The school has prepared the pupil beforehand, established learning outcomes and will provide structured opportunities for reflection afterwards.
It is meaningful work experience.
But the fact that employees inevitably explain and demonstrate things does not, by itself, establish that arrangements exist principally for a particular employee to train, instruct, care for or supervise the pupil.
Now consider a second placement.
The employer assigns one employee responsibility for the pupil for the week. That employee provides structured training, sets tasks, instructs the pupil in how to complete them, supervises their performance, corrects their work and provides ongoing feedback.
The regulated-activity question now looks rather different.
If those arrangements amount to teaching, training, instruction, care or supervision for the purposes of the legislation, frequency becomes relevant.
If that relevant activity is carried out by the same person on four days within a 30-day period, the period condition is met.
The fourth day does not make all work experience regulated activity.
It establishes the frequency condition only if the activity being counted is one of the relevant activities in the first place.
Neither description determines the legal answer by itself. They illustrate why the arrangements surrounding the activity matter, rather than providing a separate test for regulated activity.
That distinction is crucial.
What changed on 1 September 2026?
Before 1 September 2026, supervision could in certain circumstances prevent specified work with children from being regulated activity.
That exemption has now been removed.
This has sometimes been described primarily as a change affecting supervised volunteers in schools. Its reach is wider than that and can also affect paid workers outside schools where they undertake the relevant activities frequently enough.
But removing the supervision exemption did not make every adult who interacts with a child a person undertaking regulated activity.
For an under-16 work-experience placement, the relevant questions include:
What activity is the adult undertaking?
What arrangements have been made for them to undertake it?
How frequently do they undertake it?
Supervision of the adult no longer provides the former exemption once the other conditions are satisfied.
Regulated activity and DBS checks are not the same question
A DBS certificate does not make an activity regulated.
And the absence of one does not make it unregulated.
The sequence matters.
First establish what the person will actually be doing and the arrangements under which they will do it. Then consider whether the nature, frequency and circumstances of that activity meet the definition of regulated activity.
Where someone is being assessed to carry out regulated activity with children, the role is eligible for an Enhanced DBS check with Children’s Barred List information.
A precautionary instinct does not create legal eligibility for a particular level of DBS check.
The starting question for a work-experience placement should therefore not simply be:
Does this person have a DBS certificate?
It should be:
What arrangements have been made for this person to work with this pupil, and do those arrangements amount to regulated activity?
Only then does the DBS question properly follow.
Four assumptions worth challenging
“If the adult is supervised, it isn’t regulated activity.”
Not necessarily. From 1 September 2026, sufficient supervision of the adult no longer provides the previous exemption.
“Five days of work experience means the supervisor needs a DBS.”
No. Frequency is only part of the regulated-activity test. A five-day placement does not automatically mean that every employee interacting with the pupil is undertaking regulated activity.
“It’s only work experience, so DBS isn’t necessary.”
Again, no. Work experience is a label, not an exemption. Where arrangements genuinely involve an adult undertaking relevant activities with an under-16 frequently enough, regulated activity may arise.
“If we aren’t sure, it is safer just to DBS everyone.”
Uncertainty does not itself make a role eligible for an Enhanced check with Children’s Barred List information.
The common feature in all four assumptions is that a rule of thumb has replaced the legal test.
Flexible placements create another question
The changing shape of work experience makes frequency increasingly important.
The period condition is not “four consecutive days”. It is more than three days in any 30-day period.
If the same person is carrying out the relevant activity, four Wednesdays within 30 days can therefore satisfy the period condition just as four consecutive days can.
DfE guidance specifically addresses volunteers undertaking relevant activity across several schools. Its examples make clear that activity can count towards the frequency threshold even when it occurs in different settings.
But I have not identified equivalent published DfE or DBS guidance explaining how schools should operationalise this where an employee works with work-experience pupils from several different schools.
Imagine an employee works with a pupil from School A on Monday, a pupil from School B the following week, a pupil from School C the week after, and a pupil from School D the following week.
Each school may see only one day.
The employer sees four.
The statutory test is concerned with how often the person carries out the relevant activity, not simply how often one school encounters that person. DfE has expressly addressed this issue for volunteers undertaking relevant activity across different school settings. I have not identified equivalent published operational guidance for employees working with work-experience pupils from several schools.
That creates an information question before it creates an answer:
What does a school need to know about relevant activity taking place beyond its own placement, and how would it obtain that information?
The school may therefore need information that is held by the employer rather than by the school itself.
That becomes particularly significant at scale.
A large secondary school might, for example, have one Careers Leader coordinating 250 Year 10 placements during a single work-experience week.
The answer cannot depend on that person having detailed knowledge of what every employee does with every pupil during every placement. It has to depend on a system of records, processes and information exchange capable of bringing the relevant information to the people making the decision.
So what might that look like in practice?
From understanding the test to applying it
The regulated-activity decision remains a matter of professional judgement applied to the particular circumstances. A process cannot replace that judgement.
It can, however, make sure the judgement starts in the right place.
1. Understand the placement
Start with how the placement will actually work.
Will the pupil experience different parts of the workplace, shadow different people and participate in activities alongside a range of employees?
Or have arrangements been made principally for a particular adult to teach, train, instruct, care for or supervise the pupil?
That distinction does not determine the legal answer by itself. It establishes the information needed to begin applying the statutory test.
2. If relevant activity may be taking place, establish frequency
If a particular adult may be undertaking one of the relevant activities, ask how frequently they will do so.
The period condition is more than three days in any 30-day period. The days do not have to be consecutive.
There may also be relevant information about comparable activity with other children that affects the frequency assessment. Where that information sits outside the school, the school may need information from the employer.
3. Apply the regulated-activity test
Now consider the activity, the arrangements under which it is being carried out, the frequency and any other relevant statutory criteria.
Do not start with whether the employee already holds a DBS certificate.
A DBS certificate is not what makes the activity regulated.
4. If it is regulated activity, consider the DBS consequences
Once the activity has been assessed as regulated activity, the DBS question follows.
A role involving regulated activity with children is eligible for an Enhanced DBS check with Children’s Barred List information. The appropriate checking arrangements should then be considered in accordance with the relevant legal and sector-specific requirements.
5. Record the decision and its rationale
The important evidence is not simply that somebody answered a DBS question.
It is that the school can explain the basis on which the decision was made: what it understood about the placement, what activity the adult would undertake, the relevant arrangements and frequency, and how that information informed the regulated-activity judgement.
For a Careers Leader coordinating large numbers of placements, that does not mean conducting hundreds of individual investigations.
It means ensuring that the work-experience process collects the information the decision-maker actually needs.
For the DSL, it means applying the safeguarding judgement to that information rather than trying to reconstruct the placement afterwards.
That suggests a useful question for schools reviewing their systems:
Does your work-experience process collect the information your DSL actually needs to determine whether regulated activity is taking place — or does it simply ask whether somebody has a DBS certificate?
Safeguarding without unnecessary barriers
There are two risks here, and they pull in opposite directions.
The first is a safeguarding risk: relying on an outdated understanding of supervision, assuming that work experience sits outside regulated activity, or failing to recognise arrangements that genuinely involve an adult undertaking regulated activity with a child.
The second is an opportunity risk: interpreting every explanation, demonstration or workplace interaction as regulated activity and responding with unnecessary DBS requirements.
Neither serves young people particularly well.
The move towards meaningful work experience should not be interpreted as requiring every workplace employee to become a trainer or teacher.
A meaningful placement can have clear learning outcomes without requiring the employer to become the teacher. Schools can prepare pupils, establish learning objectives and provide structured reflection. Employers can provide authentic experience, interaction, appropriate participation and feedback.
The regulated-activity decision remains a separate safeguarding judgement.
And that judgement requires precision.
The answer is not more checking by default, or less checking by habit.
It is better decision-making.
And that leads to another question.
If the decision is that an employee is undertaking regulated activity, what does that mean for an ordinary employer that may never previously have considered itself part of the regulated-activity framework?
That is the subject of the next Ardea Insight.
Sources
- Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, Schedule 4: Regulated Activity.
- Explanatory Notes to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006.
- Department for Education, Careers guidance and access for education and training providers, updated 23 June 2026.
- Disclosure and Barring Service, Regulated activity with children, updated 8 September 2026.
- Disclosure and Barring Service, Eligibility for Enhanced with Barred List DBS checks with children, published 1 September 2026.
- Disclosure and Barring Service, Change to the definition of regulated activity with children from 1 September 2026, updated 4 September 2026.
- Disclosure and Barring Service, Regulated activity with children: myth busting the September 2026 supervision exemption changes, updated 4 September 2026.
- Department for Education, Regulated activity: removal of the supervision exemption, updated 29 June 2026.
- Department for Education, Keeping children safe in education 2026.
This Insight reflects published legislation and guidance available on 11 September 2026. It is intended to support professional decision-making and does not constitute legal advice.