By Anne-Marie Firmin, Manning’s Tutors
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is stirring much conversation and debate and indeed it represents a pivotal moment for families, schools, and communities across the UK. This comprehensive legislation, first introduced to Parliament on 17 December 2024, aims to completely reshape how we protect and educate our children. Together, we’ll explore the bill’s core components, address the concerns it has sparked—particularly around elective home education and support for children with special educational needs—and outline some of the aspects of this Bill which have, on the whole, been positively received. Whether you’re a parent exploring homeschooling or an educator supporting vulnerable pupils, this blog seeks to equip you with the knowledge to engage with this pending legislation confidently.
What Is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill?
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a landmark piece of legislation designed to enhance children’s social care and education systems, with the ambitious goal of breaking cycles of disadvantage. Divided into two main parts, it addresses critical areas from safeguarding vulnerable children to reforming school structures, ensuring every child has access to high-quality education and care, regardless of their circumstances.
The first part focuses on children’s social care, introducing measures to strengthen protections for at-risk children. For example, it mandates family group decision-making meetings before local authorities pursue court orders for care or supervision, empowering families to address welfare concerns collaboratively. This provision recognises the vital role of kinship carers (relatives who provide stability) and enshrines their rights in law, offering financial and legal support to keep children out of the care system where possible. The bill also regulates care workers more stringently and extends support for care leavers up to age 25, including housing and employment assistance, primarily to ease their transition into adulthood.
The second part targets education, introducing transformative changes to schools. A key initiative is the rollout of free breakfast clubs in all state-funded primary schools, starting with pilots in April 2025 and expanding nationwide. This aims to tackle child poverty (potentially saving families up to £450 annually) while boosting attendance and concentration, as well-nourished children are better equipped to learn. The bill also enforces school food standards across state schools, ensuring nutritious meals that support physical and mental health. On uniforms, it limits branded items to ease financial pressures on low-income households, promoting inclusivity without undermining school identity.
The bill mandates a national curriculum for all state-funded schools, including academies, to ensure consistency in core subjects like reading, writing, and mathematics, addressing disparities from previous academy flexibilities. Teacher pay and conditions are aligned with well maintained schools to attract and retain talent. School admissions and place planning are reformed, requiring schools to cooperate with local authorities to avoid oversubscription or underutilisation. Councils gain powers to establish new schools—maintained, academy, or free—tailored to local needs, and automatic academisation of underperforming schools is to be scrapped to accommodate for more nuanced improvement strategies.
Key Features and Safeguarding Measures
Central to the bill is a commitment to attendance and accountability. It introduces a register of children not in school, requiring local authorities to track those absent from formal education, including those in elective home education or alternative provision. This ties into strengthened council powers to intervene if a child’s home learning environment is deemed unsuitable, potentially mandating school attendance to safeguard welfare. Inspections of schools and colleges are enhanced, with tougher sanctions for teacher misconduct and regulations targeting unregistered independent educational institutions.
The response from teachers, MPs, parents and the tutoring industry has been mixed. Measures to check that children not in school receive an appropriate education is strongly supported by the Tutor’s Association. However, they would want to go further in ensuring that tuition providers comply with their standards around holding an Enhanced DBS check and having appropriate safeguarding experience/training. The proposed measure to try to locate parents of children who are not in school and who have not registered with the local authority is strongly opposed by the Tutor’s Association, who state that tuition providers are not appropriate enforcement agents. Indeed, they aptly note that local authorities can easily access records of children deregistered from school or check birth records (from the NHS) against records of children in school in order to verify which children are not registered and yet should be.
The Children’s Commissioner for England supports the bill avidly, particularly praising unique child identifiers and the ‘not-in-school’ register as tools to enhance visibility and protection. With one in four UK children reporting low wellbeing and mental health data fragmented across services, these systemic changes could potentially create a safer, more cohesive landscape, but are not without controversy.
Concerns Surrounding the Bill
Despite its ambitions, the bill has sparked significant concerns among parents, educators, and home education advocacy groups, particularly regarding elective home education and support for children with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). Critics argue that while the bill aims to protect, it risks overreach, potentially eroding parental autonomy and stigmatising responsible families choosing an alternative education path for their children.
Elective Home Education Under Scrutiny
The proposed register for children not in school, requiring notification within five days of deregistering for home education, is a key point of contention for many. Proponents view it as a safeguard against hidden abuse, given past safeguarding failures linked to home education. However, the national home education charity ‘Education Otherwise’ argues that the UK’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, though framed as improving child welfare, misunderstands existing education law and poses significant risks for families of children with special educational needs (SEN). It warns that the Bill could undermine parental responsibility and home education rights, shift blame onto parents instead of addressing local authority failures, and give councils overly broad powers to decide what counts as a “suitable education.” They also highlight specific concerns including the introduction of criminal penalties, increased surveillance of families, and the potential for SEN children who are home educated to be unfairly targeted or forced back into unsuitable school settings. (Source: Education Otherwise, 2025).
The bill’s clause requiring council consent for homeschooling children under protection plans is welcomed by some but seen by others as a bureaucratic hurdle. Local authorities’ powers to assess home suitability, including direct child interviews, risk feeling intimidatory without clear guidelines on what exactly constitutes “suitable education.” The Local Government Association supports the register but calls for resources to ensure sensitive engagement, noting that most homeschoolers excel (Local Government Association, 2025).
EHCP Shortfalls and SEND Concerns
The bill’s lack of specific provisions for EHCPs is a major frustration for SEND advocates. EHCPs, which outline tailored support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, are already strained by backlogs and underfunding. The bill’s focus on mainstream reforms, like the national curriculum, raises fears that SEND pupils could be forced into unsuitable frameworks, exacerbating inequalities. The Children’s Commissioner notes the need for separate SEND legislation, as current provisions don’t address rising exclusions or mental health crises tied to inconsistent EHCP delivery. Parents report prolonged battles for assessments, leaving children without vital therapies or placements. While the bill strengthens alternative provision oversight in theory, it doesn’t ring-fence EHCP resources, risking neglect for vulnerable learners.
Real-World Impacts and Voices
These concerns resonate deeply. A Midlands homeschooling parent shared how the register’s shadow creates anxiety, fearing intrusion into her neurodiverse child’s EHCP-tailored learning (Parent Testimonial, Home Education UK Forum). An inner-city teacher notes that breakfast clubs, while beneficial, strain staff without adequate funding (Teacher Feedback, National Education Union Discussion)
Yet, conversely, supporters argue that refined measures such as coordinated EHCP data via identifiers or registers flagging at-risk homeschoolers for targeted aid could amplify support without punishing responsible families.
Moving Forward with Vigilance and Hope
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is perhaps a double-edged sword; on the one hand it could represent a beacon of hope for equitable education and care for children, yet on the other it has brought forth a widespread call for vigilance against unintended negative consequences.
The complexity can be well summed up by the stance of The Tutors’ Association; it is supportive of measures that ensure that all children receive a good quality of education, including children who are home-educated. However, it does have some specific concerns around the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, particularly where the new ‘Provider Duty’ expects tutors and tuition/education companies to report lists of clients to local authorities. Notably, The Tutors’s Association does not think that tutors and education providers should have an enforcement role and the negative consequences of this would almost certainly outweigh the benefits.
By Anne-Marie Firmin, Manning’s Tutors