This is the first of a multi-part series on Labour’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons on 17 December. It focuses on the next steps in the Parliamentary process.
What’s been said?
A careful look at the parliamentary page for the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill [CWSB] provides factual clarity about the practicalities and what to expect next.
The Bill was introduced in the Commons on Tuesday 17 December and had its First Reading on that date. The Second Reading is scheduled for 8 January, i.e. the first Wednesday after MPs reconvene after recess.
Second Readings are the first occasion a Bill is debated, and the focus is on the main principles rather than the details of each clause. So whilst there will be plenty of references to HE, don’t expect anything to be changed at this stage. Second reading debates on Government Bills normally take a ‘day’ (i.e. about 6 hours).
The Money resolution is also timetabled for the same day. These are required to be approved by MPs if a new Bill proposes spending public money on matters not already specified in an existing Act of Parliament. Normally they are voted on immediately after a Bill has passed its Second reading.
The Publications tab links to the current version of the Bill, along with other documents. Initially these are the Explanatory Notes, the Delegated Powers memorandum and the Human Rights Memorandum. You can find these listed on our dedicated Bill page along with other useful information and resources. The HE Byte team will endeavour to keep this page updated as the Bill progresses.
Delegated Powers memoranda are a necessity for all public bills in order to justify the delegation of powers, usually to Ministers, in a bill. The DfE were therefore required to provide this for the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee who consider such matters. Similarly, Human Rights Memoranda are prepared by the Government to assist the Joint Committee on Human Rights with its scrutiny of a Bill’s human rights implications.
Reading the small print is always advisable and, needless to say, both of the above yield important insights into how the government seek to justify their proposals.
The day the Bill was introduced in the Commons a post entitled “Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill What parents need to know” was published on the Government’s Education Hub blog. It provides the briefest of summaries of key points covered in the Bill.
Much more information is found in their Policy Summary document, published the following day. The holding page for this cites the Bill’s aim as: “to change the law to better protect children and raise standards in education.” The document purports to explain what the Government aims to achieve through each measure, why the legislation is needed, its effects and how it will work in practice. We also read that “a regulatory and equalities impact assessment” will be published in due course.
Why does it matter?
Home educating circles have been buzzing with reaction and comment since the Bill was published. There has been anger about the implied mistrust of all HE parents, and incredulity about the way it was introduced on the crest of a wave of political outrage about the death of Sara Sharif. Looking back, it’s not hard to think that the flurry of negative ‘reports’ about HE which appeared in the weeks prior to the verdict constituted a carefully orchestrated media campaign to prepare the ground for this section of the Bill. It has to be asked why the Government considered it necessary to time its introduction to follow in short order after the Sharif verdicts were announced.
Consequently, many HE communities spent the run-up to the Christmas and New Year holidays discussing how they might address the significant changes the Bill will impose, changes which were being masked by widespread political ‘outrage,’ with the finger of blame being pointed once again at the freedom parents rightly have to educate their children outside of schools provided or overseen by the State.
If HE families are to resist this power-grab by the state effectively, there is a need to be level-headed, stand back, understand what is at stake and work out our personal strategies to make the most impact, not just on the political processes, but on society at large.
We’ll think more about the content of the Bill in the next article, but for now we consider why this Bill is more dangerous than its predecessors. How many of these have there been?
List of Bills 2009 to 2024
Bills which have been presented in Parliament seeking to bring in registration of home educated childrewn in England (2009 to 2024)| Introduced | Bill Title | Type | Sponsor | Party | Role | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 2009 | Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009 | Government Bill | Ed Balls | Labour | Secretary of State | Clauses removed prior to 2010 General Election |
| Jun 2017 | Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL] | Private Members Bill (Ballot) | Lord Soley | Labour | Peer | Failed to gain a Second reading in the Commons (timed out) |
| May 2022 | Schools Bill [HL] | Government | Baroness Barran | Conservative | Minister | Bill abandoned due to being badly drafted |
| May 2023 | Children not in school (register) Bill | Private Members’ Bill (Ten Minute Rule) | Flick Drummond | Conservative | MP | Failed to gain a Second reading (timed out) |
| Dec 2023 | Children Not in School (Registers, Support and Orders) Bill | Private Members’ Bill (Presentation) | Flick Drummond | Conservative | MP | Failed to gain a Second reading (General election called) |
| Jan 2024 | Children Not in School (National Register and Support) Bill | Opposition Bill | Bridget Phillipson | Labour | Shadow Minister | Fell at Second reading because Labour was seeking to score political points |
| Sep 2024 | Home School Education Registration and Support Bill [HL] | Private Members Bill (Ballot) | Lord Storey | Lib Dem | Peer | Awaiting Committee stage but superseded by Government Bill |
| Mar 2024 | Children Not in School (Registers, Support and Orders) Bill | Private Members’ Bill (Presentation) | Paul Holmes | Con | MP | Awaiting Second reading but superseded by Government Bill |
| Dec 2024 | Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill | Government Bill | Bridget Phillipson | Labour | Secretary of State | In progress. |
Private Members’ bills have very little chance of becoming law, so we can set those aside along with Phillipson’s Opposition Bill fiasco from January this year. Labour’s 2009 Children, Schools and Families Bill failed because Gordon Brown called a General Election. HE families had been successfully lobbying Conservative and Lib Dem MPs following the announcement of the Badman Review, and both parties insisted in pre-election trade-offs that the offending clauses were removed. The 2022 Schools Bill is still fresh in our collective memory. Despite the Government’s desire to ensure that CNiS Registers and regulating out-of-school settings made it onto the statute book, they could not allow the rest of this Bill to pass because of its sloppy drafting.
The first reason why the current Bill is more dangerous than its predecessors is because the main opposition parties will no longer collectively oppose CNiS registers and the associated clauses. To be clear, this was already the situation prior to the Sara Sharif verdict being announced.
The second reason is that it contains additional measures which the Department for Education have been seeking to implement for some time, but which were not included in the Schools Bill. (Could it be that Boris and his Cabinet were actually a restraining hand on the mandarins in the DfE…?)
We will look at specific details of the CWSB in future, but for now here is a list of the main provisions which will directly impact every HE family if they are enacted. These are found in Part 2, headed ‘Schools,’ but including a raft of measures related to Children Not in School:
- Introducing a local authority consent mechanism for withdrawal of certain children from school.
- Empowering local authorities to require that children subject to child protection processes attend school when school is in their best interests.
- Registration: introducing a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers and provide support to home-educating parents.
- Requiring local authorities to take into account the suitability of the home and other learning environments when determining whether children should be required to attend school.
- Improving the efficiency of the School Attendance Order process
These are expanded upon in points 31-40 of the Explanatory Notes (pages 21-24)
It’s somewhat ironic that the measures mostly likely to restrict future home education freedoms appear in a section headed “Create a safer and higher quality education system for every child.” Most home educating parents have come to realise that a safe and high quality education for their unique child is unlikely to be found in the state education system.
Here we find ourselves returning to a well-worn theme about where the boundaries of parental and state responsibilities actually lie when it comes to the upbringing and education of children.
The Government has said plenty about their ambitions for this Bill, but perhaps it’s their unstated assumptions which home educators should be reflecting on as they consider the way forward.
One final procedural point to note; whilst the Second reading is scheduled very soon after MPs return to Parliament, the real detailed work of scrutinising the Bill’s content will take place after this, at Committee stage. Membership of any Bill committee reflects the party political make-up of the House, so this will be heavily weighted towards Labour. Normally committee members are MPs who have shown interest in the areas covered by a Bill. Bill Committee membership is usually limited to seventeen, with the Chair being appointed by the Speaker. Regarding how long the Committee stage might last, the MPs’ Guide to Procedure states:
“Committees on Government bills often have a set period of time to consider the bill. This is set out in the programme order, which is usually agreed by the House on the day of the second reading debate.”
What can I do?
In the short term, you might feel the need for a clearer understanding of how the Bill will impact families. See our dedicated Bill page for resources which may help in this regard. Note in particular a well-written comment by Defend Digital Me. Hopefully, some of these items will help you to communicate your concerns about various aspects of the Bill to your MP. If you already have an established connection with them, you may be able to alert them ahead of Second Reading, though the timing works against that. One has to wonder if this was also intentional. It certainly makes a mockery of “informed debate.”
Given the pace at which things are progressing, there is a need to be preparing now for Committee stage. Because of the limited number of MPs involved, there are two possibilities.
If your MP is on the Committee, make a special effort to influence their thinking as soon as possible after the list of members is announced.
If your MP is not on the Committee, they can still engage with those who are and can even propose amendments to a Bill, though they will need to find a Committee member who is willing to propose it on their behalf.
Committees work through the clauses in order – there are sixty in total. Numbers 24-29 concern CNiS registers. (The next cluster, 30-37, relate to “independent educational institutions,” and these measures too will impact many families whom the DfE class as EHE.) Once the timetable for Committee stage is published, we could expect these clauses to be debated in the middle third of the Bill Committee’s sittings.
Finally, for Bills started in the Commons (as this one did), Committees normally accept evidence from the public. This can be in written or oral form, from either individuals or organisations. We will try to provide further comment about this in future, but we suggest that now is the time to begin thinking what you might say about the Bill to your MP, and perhaps directly to the Committee.
Third reading follows Committee stage. This is an opportunity for any MP to put forward amendments. If these are to succeed, the ground needs to have been extremely well prepared before then, given that the main opposition parties are on board with both the registration and the safeguarding narrative.