News

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is to introduce new registers to identify children who are not in school as well as paving the way for a unique identifier number for children across services, similar to the national insurance number in adults.

The Bill, which was being tabled in Parliament as this issue of the journal was going to press, was described by the Department for Education as central to its Plan for Change, which aims to ‘put children's futures at the centre of rebuilding public services, and break down barriers to opportunity’.

As part of the Bill, parents will no longer have an automatic right to educate their children at home if their child is subject to a child protection investigation or under a child protection plan.

Further, if a child's home environment is assessed as unsuitable or unsafe, local authorities will be given the power to intervene and require school attendance for any child. The DfE said that measures in the Bill will make sure that teachers and schools are always involved in decisions around safeguarding children in their area.