The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024 – 2025

What is the Government hoping to achieve with this Bill?

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is described by the Government as being a key step towards breaking the link between young people’s background and their future success. The Government are hoping it will drive high and rising standards, protect children at risk of abuse, and stop vulnerable children falling through the cracks in existing services. 

It is then a significant offering from the Labour Government, described by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson as a landmark bill and ‘the single biggest piece of children safeguarding legislation in a generation’. In this article, we will explore some of the key changes that schools and trusts should be aware of at this juncture. 

This article does come with a health warning. This is a bill and it is still some way from being a finalised piece of legislation. It could be subject to significant amendment or even be scraped in its entirety. Many of you will remember the previous Government introduced the Schools Bill with the aims of raising education standards, which was later dropped. Though it is unlikely this Bill will be dropped entirely, interested parties should keep a watching brief. 

Children not in school

The Bill makes a number of changes concerning children not in school. One such change, is that a parent of a ‘relevant child’ must obtain the consent of their local authority if they wish to withdraw the child from school in order to receive education outside of school (such as home education). The local authority may grant or refuse consent, and if the parent is unhappy with the local authority decision they may appeal. 

A ‘relevant child’ is a child of compulsory school age who is:

• at a special school under section 337 of the Education Act 1996 or an independent school organised for special educational needs provision; 

• subject to enquiries by a local authority under section 47 of the Children Act 1989; or

• receiving support from a local authority under section 47(8) of the Children Act 1989 because they are suffering or likely to suffer significant harm. 

Another important change is that local authorities in England must maintain a register of children not in school. The register must include the names of everyone providing education to the child and how much time the child spends being educated by their parents. It is for parents to provide the local authority with this information, and they can be fined for failure to do so. 

After giving a preliminary notice to parents, where a local authority remains unsatisfied that:

• the child is receiving suitable education; and/or

• the child is regularly attending school;

and the local authority determines that it would be in the child’s best interests to receive education at school, the local authority may serve a School Attendance Order on a parent. A School Attendance Order requires a parent to ensure the child’s registration at a designated school. It will be an offence if the parent fails to arrange this. In informing its decision to issue a School Attendance Order, the local authority may request to visit the child at home. 

These changes indicate a clear push towards ensuring pupils are in school and are being provided with appropriate education and care. It places a higher burden on parents to show that keeping their child out of school is in the child’s best interests. 

Admissions

Schools and local authorities will be under a duty to co-operate with each other when carrying out their respective duties regarding school admissions. In addition, local authorities will be empowered to direct an academy to admit a child, in the same way they currently can for a maintained school. The latter in particular represents an important change, and is part of a wider push from this Labour Government to align the rules governing maintained schools and academies.  

The Government also wants to give local authorities greater control over academy admissions in their area. Currently, objections to the Schools Adjudicator about the published admissions number (PAN) can only be made where an admission authority has decreased a school’s PAN. The Bill allows for local authorities to object to an academy’s PAN where the admission authority decreased, increased or kept PAN the same.

The Schools Adjudicator would also have powers to set the PAN where they uphold an objection to it. The Government say these changes will enable local authorities to better support the needs of the local community. 

Academies

Academies will now be required to teach the National Curriculum. The Government’s view is that the current discrepancy between maintained schools and academies leaves potential for inconsistencies in education standards. The hope is that mandating the National Curriculum and the consistency that will bring will lead to improved outcomes for pupils. 

The Bill will also allow regulations to be made which will empower academy trusts to direct pupils off-site to improve their behaviour (in the same way as maintained schools may already do). Both of these changes keep that that recurring theme, that this Government wants to further align the rules for academies and maintained schools.

Finally, the duty to make an Academy Order in in relation to a ‘School Causing Concern’ will be repealed. This duty is to be converted to a discretionary power for the Secretary of State to exercise. The Government believes that forced academisation has not always been effective and can be highly disruptive for pupils, staff and parents. Though it remains an option, the Secretary of State will now have other options at their disposal, including the deployment of the new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams.

School uniforms

The number of branded uniform items a school can require pupils to have will be limited to three during the school year. This will increase to four items for secondary pupils if one of those four items is a tie. 

The items include a bag and any clothing required for school for any lesson, club, activity or event facilitated by the school. A branded item is one that has the school name or logo on it, or as a result of its colour or design is only available from particular suppliers.

This change has long been advocated for by parents, and aims to ease the financial burden on families who struggle to afford prescriptive uniform. In due course, schools and trusts will want to review their uniform policies to ensure changes are reflective of the eventual legislation.  

Breakfast clubs

The Bill will require schools to secure that breakfast club provision is available free of charge for pupils up to the age of 12. This will be made up of childcare provision for a minimum of 30 minutes before the school day, as well as the provision of breakfast for the pupils. 

This measure aims to deliver the Government’s manifesto commitment to introduce free breakfast clubs in every state-funded primary school. Many schools and trusts already operate breakfast clubs, but even those that do should monitor the progress of the Bill and ensure it meets the requirements to be set out in the legislation. 

What’s next?

Many may welcome the change, especially around closing some (not all) of the compliance gaps between academies and schools. Equally, trust leaders are concerned that the freedoms achieved under the academies programme around pay and decision-making independent of local authorities is being eroded. Schools and trusts should keep a watching brief for now, and monitor the progress of the Bill as it makes its way through Parliament and the House of Lords. Clear takeaways though, are the Government’s push to streamline the regimes dealing with academies and maintained schools, as well as increased powers to local authorities with the aim of improving education and care standards for children in their area. 

We will continue to monitor and share our views as the Bill continues is journey.