Mar 13 (edited) • Home Ed Looks Like This
Children's school and wellbeing bill update to amendments
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is moving closer to becoming law in England, and with it comes the most sweeping and intrusive changes to home education in England and Wales in modern history. Wales is yet to vote on this (17th march) but England's vote has passed and is just needing royal assent.
For home educators these changes are not ideal at all.
Despite months of campaigning, evidence, submissions, legal arguments, and thousands of parents explaining how home education actually works, the direction of the bill has remained the same... control over our children and their minds.
The government has pushed forward — and many MPs and peers have either misunderstood home education or accepted deeply flawed narratives about it. Amendments have been agreed and the home education element of the bill pretty much finalised.
This is not minor reform. It is a fundamental shift in the relationship between families and the state.
The amendments that have survived the parliamentary process have not provided any protection to home educating families from the misuse of these powers by the LA. Instead, they risk handing already overreaching Local Authorities even more tools to pressure, harass, and control families who are lawfully educating their children outside the school system.
The gap between what the law actually says and what Local Authorities tell parents it says is about to become concerning. Allowing the LA to overstep on our rights as parents.
The next step will be the EHE guidance consultation, this will document how LAs should behave, the things they should ask for when considering the suitability of the actual education. The bill does not consider the actual education, the bill is about the register, ‘safeguarding’ and the SAO process. But it does mean the EHE guidance becomes statutory, something LAs must follow.
At its core is the creation of a mandatory register of children not in school, controlled by Local Authorities.
Parents will be required to provide information about the child. Details of the child’s protected characteristics such as race, religion and gender, name and details of all parents, and estimated time each parent provides education.
The register will also require details of, and an estimate of, time spent receiving education elsewhere if it exceeds a set number of hours which will be set in guidance later, hopefully excluding youth groups such as scouting, football clubs and tutors will not fall into this criteria.
And an incredibly concerning part, the register can also contain anything the LA considers appropriate.
Requests to update the register will normally be once a year but can be up to every 3 months. And you must reply within 15 days. This is separate to enquiries about the actual education, this will be determined in the EHE guidance, yet to be consulted on.
Local Authorities will be given expanded powers to request information and to share that information with other agencies.
The bill requires other people who are providing the education without oversight of the parent, such as online schools and religion focused educational providers to provide information to the LA upon request. This is to confirm the child attends, and how much time is spent receiving education from them without parental involvement.
And one of the true oversteps imo is that the bill states The LA must consider where the child lives.
This is a major invasion of privacy, all home educators, once registered (this includes existing home educators), will be under the rule of LAs having 15 days to consider the environment in which the child lives, the LA can consider demanding a home visit to see the child inside any of the homes they live.
If the parent refuses a visit or to respond to the LA consideration of the environment, it can be used as a reason to consider if they can stay home educated.
Currently a parent can deregister their child from the school system if they wish, once this bill is enacted however, it is required that parents recieve Local Authority consent before a parent can remove their child from school to home educate in certain circumstances.
These include the child being registered in a special school, AND the addition of requiring consent in all school settings if there is a current social services investigation or a child protection plan or similar having been in place in the last 5 years.
The child must remain in school whilst this decision takes place!
If the Local Authority refuses consent, because the LA deems school to be in the best interests of the child, the child must remain in school.
Even more concerning, if consent is refused, parents may be prevented from applying again for six months. In other words, the Local Authority — not the parent — can effectively decide whether home education is allowed. Which, let's be honest, they are likely to do.
This completely reverses the long-standing legal position that parents hold the primary duty to decide how their child is educated.
Another deeply troubling shift is the language around Local Authorities determining what is in the child’s “best interests.” This is mentioned multiple times in the bill.
Historically, the approach has been simple:
Is the child receiving a suitable full time education, to their age, aptitude and ability?
Now the bill moves toward allowing Local Authorities to judge whether home education is appropriate according to their view of the child’s best interests.
Anyone familiar with Local Authority practice will immediately see the danger here. Many already believe school is always better.
This risks turning an objective test into a subjective opinion.
After the bill receives royal assent (currently estimated to be Spring 2026) there will be a period of up to 2 years to draw up regulations for “a pilot scheme” involving up to 30% of local authorities in England and Wales.
A pilot scheme is a way of testing a new system within a smaller group before making changes that will apply to everyone.
In pilot areas, parents will have to have a meeting with the LA before the child’s name can be taken off the school roll for home education. Under the pilot scheme, once these regulations are in place (usually around 2 years AFTER the bill comes into force, so likely 2028) parents in the pilot local authorities wishing to home educate will have to have this meeting with the LA before the child can be taken off the school roll.
There is nothing about whether meetings would be in person or virtual, or how the pilot LAs would be funded.
The pilot includes a mandatory meeting with the family and child (unless there are exceptional circumstances). School must also attend if the parent consents, we expect the more extreme LAs may use it as evidence against you if you don’t agree, but also that schools where relationships are fraught will try to worm out of the meeting if they can Or use it to their advantage. The child also has to attend these meetings.
The purpose of the meeting is to make sure you understand the LA duty and your own, however LAs already lie about this, and we expect these meetings will used as a way to scare families into thinking they have to recreate school at home, or to keep the child in school.
The meeting is also to share why you are deregistering (negative reasons could be used against you). To ask about any support needs or safeguarding and welfare issues. This could mean the school raise concerns they never had before (a problem we currently see as a running theme when parents deregister their child) but it also allegedly an opportunity for you to explain how the school failed the child.
The child must carry on attending school until the LA inform the school that the meeting has taken place, there is no timescale for the meeting or the notification. Which could leave children in vulnerable and dangerous situations in school. This meeting can include anything your LA officer deems important in their opinion.
This trial opens the door to practices that home educating families have fought off for decades.
We will probably learn the identities of local authorities in the pilot BEFORE the pilot starts, but because this is new LAW not just new guidance it can’t actually start until the regulations are fully completed. The usual system is for LAs to put themselves forward (or not) for the pilot, rather than being nominated by the government.
The minimum time for the pilot scheme is 2 years, which takes us to2030, although the pilot could in theory go on for up to 5 years.
At the end of the pilot, the English and Welsh governments will separately decide whether to extend the scheme across the whole country. Details of any national scheme would require further new regulations to be drawn up and agreed at a later date.
On January 7th. The memorandum says:
“The Department is proposing an amendment to Clause 31[NOW 39], which will enable the Secretary of State (and Welsh Ministers) to pilot mandatory meetings in certain Local Authorities (to be determined by regulations). The school would not be allowed to delete the name of any child of compulsory school age from the admissions register, where the parent wanted to remove that child for education otherwise than at school (i.e. for home education), until after a meeting between the Local Authority and parent had taken place.
Further to consultation, the Secretary of State will be empowered after at least two years of the pilot, to (through affirmative regulations) cease the pilot and roll out the scheme to all Local Authorities in England or just cease the scheme. Welsh Ministers will have the same powers in relation to Wales.
These measures are likely to lead to a slight delay in a child’s name being removed from the school admissions register, during which time the child must continue to regularly attend school. If the Local Authority becomes concerned during the meeting about the likely suitability of home education but the parent still pursues home education, it will prioritise this family for follow up and consider use of the school attendance order process which could require the child to again be registered at a school.”
The New SAO process includes a preliminary notice, which can be served if SS become involved, or the education is deemed unsuitable, or if the LA decide it would be in the best interests of the child to attend school. They can also serve this notice if you have refused to register or respond to enquiries.
You will be given an opportunity to reply.
The LA can then proceed to name a school and ultimately an SAO if they are not satisfied the education is suitable or in the child’s best interests.
The setting in which the child lives and is educated must be considered, and the LA may request a home visit to see the child inside any of the homes in which they live.
Refusing a visit can be used as a concern.
Parents who fail to comply with a School Attendance Order (SAO) could face heavier financial penalties and even prison, making it even harder for families to resist Local Authority pressure once enforcement begins.
For some families, the financial risk alone may force them to give up home education.
Those in areas who already use s437(1) and SAO powers to force compliance are held accountable by families who pursue things to court, but these changes make that risk inherently more dangerous.
Support is written in to the bill. However, there is a simple get out clause that the support the LA offers only needs to be what they deem appropriate – in other words most LAs will do nothing helpful.
A twice a year forum to be offered for home educators to discuss how the register, SAO process, mandatory visits, pilot etc are going. This is to be arranged by the LA, but no further details are given on what this would look like.
They already misquote guidance.
They already demand information they are not entitled to.
They already pressure families into school-style education.
This bill gives them far more leverage.
Home educators are about to enter the most difficult legal landscape they have ever faced.
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Children's school and wellbeing bill update to amendments
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