The 3 main questions I am asked about the Wellbeing Bill are:
- Will I still be allowed to home educate?
- If my child has an EHCP does that mean they can’t be home educated?
- How soon is all this happening?
This page looks at the situation for families who are just starting home education or who are already home educating.
NOTE THAT AS OF 18.9.25 with the bill reissued after committee ended, CNIS is now 31-36 (rather than 30-35 as it was for committee in the Lords, or 25-29 as it was through the latter stages of the Commons)
Clause 31 of the Wellbeing Bill sets out government proposals for compulsory registration for children not in school. Clause 31 (and possibly clause 32) will be debated in the House of Lords on September 2nd 2025.
Potential consequences for parents who fail to provide information for the register are set out in School Attendance Orders, Clause 32.
Onscreen View of The Bill
You can check the exact wording of the clauses here https://shorturl.at/eJleP (onscreen view of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill )
Will I still be allowed to home educate
This sometimes means “will home education still be legal if I need it later” which I cover elsewhere https://edyourself.org/faq-childrens-wellbeing-bill/
Meanwhile there is also a lot of concern about children who are already home educated potentially being forced back into school or new home educators being challenged by the local authority as soon as they take the child out of school (because they will have 15 days to complete the registration process)
Children Already Home Educated Current Law
In England and Wales parents don’t have to register their child as home educated. The local authority already knows (or definitely should know) about all children taken out of school to be home educated. This is because schools have a legal duty to inform the council when a child is taken off roll. See https://edyourself.org/deregistration/
Children We Don’t Know About
However, councils won’t necessarily know about a child who never started school or who came out of school in one area but then the family moved to another area.
Also as indicated above, local authorities may not get the information from schools (even with the statutory duty placed on schools). Additionally in my experience some local authorities are very bad at record keeping ie they have been told but they don’t know that they know.
Hard Cases Make Bad Law
Opinions may vary as to the likely numbers of children who never start school but somehow remain undetected, and hence whether compulsory registration is not just a massive over-reaction if we already know about nearly every child anyway.
At the same time this is never just about the numbers; it may ultimately come down to “if it just saves one child”.
Children Already Home Educated Future Law
Information For The Register
The Wellbeing Bill says that in future local authorities will have to keep registers of school age children in their area who have not been registered with a school OR who are registered with a school but also flexi-schooled (ie partly home educated) OR on a part time timetable
Clause 31 says:
“A register under section 436B must contain the following information
in respect of a child registered in it—
(a) the child’s name, date of birth and home address;
(b) the name and home address of each parent of the child;
(c) the name of each parent who is providing education to that
child;
(d) the amount of time that the child spends receiving education
from each parent of the child;
(e) if the child receives education from a person other than their
parent—
(i) the names and addresses of any individuals and
organisations involved in providing that education;
(ii) a description of the type of each provider named under
sub-paragraph (i);
(iii) the postal address of each place where that education
is provided (where different from the address in
sub-paragraph (i)) or the website or email address of
the provider if that education is provided virtually;
(iv) the total amount of time that the child spends receiving
that education and the amount of time the child spends
receiving that education without any parent of the child
being actively involved in the tuition or supervision of
the child.”
Duty On Parents
Parents will have to notify the local authority when their child is eligible for registration and provide the required details for the register within 15 days [Clause 31 ] .
IF ANY DETAILS CHANGE THESE MUST ALSO BE REPORTED WITHIN 15 DAYS.
Children in scope of registration will include children who become newly eligible eg by reaching school age, by moving into the area, or when they are taken out of school by their parents for home education. (The LA already gets school notification about this last group but the difference in future is parents having 15 days to complete the registration process to the LA’s satisfaction)
It will also include children already known to be home educated. These families may have been on the local authority list for years (and been in contact with the council over many years)
However as noted above, the local authority will not know about every child, so the duty to notify the authority will apply equally to long-standing home educating families of whom the LA has not previously been aware.
Parents Who Miss Out Information
If a parent fails to supply details for the register by the deadline, then the local authority can CHOOSE (the bill says may not must) to start the school attendance order process. This is known as Condition C and Condition D and can be found at
New School Attendance Order Process
Starting the school attendance order process will be DISCRETIONARY for registration failings ie it will depend on the attitude of the local authority and also on how much encouragement is given in as yet unwritten statutory guidance.
The local authority will specifically be able to judge education unsatisfactory if parents refuse home visits once in the school attendance order process.
However, if parents DON’T refuse the home visit, then education can be judged satisfactory and the attendance order process will go no further. Please read my School Attendance Order page linked below to understand more about how SAOs work.
What If Child Has EHCP?
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill says NOTHING about imposing more restrictions on children with an EHCP who are already home educated.
However, concerns have been raised that it will probably be more likely that families of children with special educational needs and disabilities [SEND] eg in single parent households will not be able to comply with registration requirements around details of the other parent, and will subsequently find it much more difficult to comply with requests to talk to the child in the home, leading to disproportionate and discriminatory use of School Attendance Orders.
Registration Arguments
Those IN FAVOUR of compulsory registration argue:
- If we don’t know where all the children are, we can’t make sure they are getting all the things they need (the welfare/wellbeing argument)
- Bad things happened to children who “weren’t being seen by anyone” or “just disappeared” (the safeguarding argument)
- Bad things happen to children in illegal schools and Something Must Be Done
People who are AGAINST compulsory registration argue
- When we DO know where children are, many many children still don’t get the things they need anyway (eg children unable to attend school don’t get alternative provision; families asking for support from social care only get Early Help or a child protection investigation; home educating families are told there’s no money for support etc etc)
- Bad things also happen to children who ARE being seen in school; bad things happen to some children BECAUSE OF school; forced attendance can be HARMFUL; in tragic cases mechanisms were already in place for children to be seen but the system failed them
- Taking action against illegal schools should be a separate issue
Coming from a place of needing to know where children are and that someone has seen the child goes some way to understanding what is going on with the Wellbeing Bill, in terms of
- the amount of information required for the register
- the emphasis on information about – and time with – each parent
- the drive to get information about – and from – “providers”
- the push to see the child in the home and to investigate the educational provision with the possibility of enforcing school attendance in cases where parents miss off any details for the register
When Will All This Happen
My best guess on earliest possible timing for the proposed changes to Children Not In School (whichever form they finally take) would be the end of 2025 for the bill to become law and Autumn 2026 for guidance to be issued enabling the relevant sections of the Act to be commenced.