Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill: call for evidence

Aims of the Bill

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has two parts: part one on children’s social care and part two on schools.

Part one: Children’s social care

Part one of the bill would:

Kinship care and family networks

• Require local authorities to offer a family group decision-making meeting (FGDM) before applying to take a child into care (clause 1)
• Define kinship carers in law, require local authorities to publish information about the services they offer in their area for children in kinship care and their families (a “kinship local offer”), and extend the role of Virtual School Heads to cover children in need and all children in kinship care (clauses 5 and 6)

Child protection 

• Require education and childcare providers to be included in an area’s safeguarding arrangements (clause 2)
• Require local authorities to establish multi-agency child protection staffed by people from education, social work, health and the police (clause 3)
• Allow for the creation of a single unique identifier for children and introduce new duties around data sharing (clause 4)

Care leavers

• Require all local authorities to offer Staying Close support to care leavers where deemed necessary and to include information on procedures to ensure a supportive transition to independent living in their published local offer for care leavers (clauses 7 and 8)

Accommodation for looked after children

• Allow the Secretary of State to direct local authorities to establish regional co-operation arrangements for planning and commissioning homes for looked after children (clause 9)
• Provide a statutory framework for children to be deprived of their liberty in accommodation other than a secure children’s home (clause 10)
• Increase Ofsted oversight of organisations that operate multiple children’s homes or independent fostering agencies and allow Ofsted to fine unregistered children’s homes (clauses 11, 12 and 16)
• Introduce a financial oversight scheme for designated independent fostering agencies and providers of children’s homes (clauses 13, 15 and 16)
• Allow the Secretary of State to cap the profits of providers of children’s homes and independent fostering agencies (clauses 14 and 16)

Children’s social care workers

• Allow the Secretary of State to make regulations on the use of agency workers in children’s social care (clause 18)
• Extend legislation against ill-treatment or wilful neglect to children aged 16 and 17 in certain care and detention settings (clause 19)

Employment of children

• Introduce a new single set of rules for the employment of children across England which would provide more flexibility in the hours when children can work than the existing rules (clause 20)

Part two: Schools

Part two of the bill would:

Breakfast clubs and school food standards

• Require state-funded primary schools to provide free breakfast clubs (clause 21)
• Clarify the law on the application of school food standards to academies, including at breakfast (clause 22)

School uniforms

• Place statutory limits on the number of branded items of uniform statefunded schools can require (clause 23)

Children not in school

• Introduce a local authority consent mechanism for the withdrawal of certain children from school, including those at special schools (clause 24)
• Introduce a requirement for local authorities to maintain a register of children not in school, with duties for parents and related requirements for school attendance orders to be issued in some cases (clauses 25 to 29 and schedule 1)

Independent educational institutions

• Expand the regulation of independent educational institutions that provide all or most of a child’s education (clauses 30 to 35)
• Strengthen Ofsted’s powers to investigate unregistered, and therefore illegal, independent schools (clauses 36 to 37)
• Amend Ofsted’s requirements to report on independent school inspectorates, and clarify information sharing powers (clause 38)

Teacher misconduct

• Broaden the teacher misconduct and prohibition regime to include teachers in more settings, regardless of their current teaching status or when the alleged misconduct or offence occurred (clause 39)

Changes relating to academies

• Require new teachers in academies and free schools to have or be in the process of achieving, qualitied teacher status (QTS), and to go through statutory induction processes (clause 40)
• Require academies to teach a revised national curriculum (clause 41)
• Allow the Education Secretary to direct an academy trust to do (or not do) something if it isn’t discharging its powers or meeting its duties properly (clause 43)
• Remove the existing duty of the Education Secretary to make an academy order (beginning the process of converting a maintained school to an academy) if a maintained school is in special measures or has serious weaknesses (clause 44)
• Bring teachers in academies within the statutory national framework for pay and conditions, which currently only applies directly to maintained schools (clause 45)

School admission arrangements

• Require schools and local authorities to cooperate to manage school admissions, and the supply of local school places; give local authorities powers to direct academy schools to admit pupils; and give an independent body (the Schools Adjudicator) new powers around maximum admission numbers (clauses 47 to 50)

Opening new schools

• Remove the requirement for most new schools to be academies, and restore local authorities’ and other bodies’ powers to propose opening new maintained schools and pupil referral units (PRUs) (clauses 51 to 55)

Follow the progress of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2024-25 was introduced on 17 December 2024. The bill had its second reading on 8 January 2025.

• Bills before Parliament: Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
• Read Explanatory Notes: Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
• House of Commons Library Briefing Paper

Oral evidence sessions are expected to be held on Tuesday 21 January.

Guidance on submitting written evidence

Deadline for written evidence submissions

The Public Bill Committee is now able to receive written evidence. The sooner you send in your submission, the more time the Committee will have to take it into consideration.

Amendments tabled to the Bill, and information regarding the order in which amendments will be taken in Committee, will be available in due course on the Bill’s publications page (under ‘Amendment paper’ and ‘Selection of amendments’). Once the Committee has dealt with an amendment it will not revisit it.

The Public Bill Committee on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill will meet for the first time on Tuesday 21 January 2025 and will report by 5pm on Tuesday 11 February. When the Committee concludes its consideration of the Bill it is no longer able to receive written evidence and it can conclude earlier than the deadline of 5pm on Tuesday 11 February 2025. You are strongly advised to submit your written evidence as soon as possible.

Your submission should be emailed to scrutiny@parliament.uk

Further guidance on submitting written evidence can be found here (pdf, 1MB).

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