This page is primarily about full-time institutions and how the definition of full-time will change because of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
There is currently no legal definition of full time in the independent sector although the government has given 18 hours a week as a guide.
If the education provided is purely religious instruction then the institution does not have to register as an independent school. This is set out in section 92 of the Education and Skills Act 2008.
However, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill – expected to become an Act of Parliament in Spring 2026 – will amend section 92 so that in future more full-time settings will have to register, for example full-time settings with a very narrow curriculum such as Haredi Jewish establishments.
This can be found in the Wellbeing Bill under the heading “Independent educational institutions – Expanding the scope of regulation“.
In the future, ALL the time that a child spends at the institution could be counted as “education time” for the purpose of hours calculation, without any reference to the breadth of the curriculum.
The Wellbeing Bill says “regulations may specify that an amount of time is or is not to be treated as “full-time” by reference to a number of hours in, or a proportion of, a week or other period, or in any other way; provide that time spent on a specified activity or on an activity of a specified description is or is not to be treated as time during which education is being provided”
The bill goes on to say that relevant factors include “the number of hours per week that education is provided to children by the institution; activities incidental to that education (such as breaks and independent study time) are provided; the number of weeks in an academic year that education is provided; the time of day that education is provided.”
Majority of Child’s Education
NB the Wellbeing Bill itself makes no reference to the majority of a child’s education as a test for whether institution is providing full-time education.
This is only mentioned in DfE Policy Note Wellbeing Bill which say “Whether a setting is providing “full time” education for a child will be determined by reference to the test of whether the child could be expected to receive all or a majority of their education at the setting.”
However, the reference to majority of a child’s education in the Policy Note may sound familiar to alternative provision settings because Ofsted tends to query whether an AP setting is genuinely “part-time” if it is delivering all or substantially all of a child’s education.
Wellbeing Bill Children Not In School
A different chapter of the Wellbeing Bill covering Children Not In School states that in future, home educating parents will have to notify the local authority of any providers they are using to deliver education above a certain number of hours a week plus the providers will have to give details to local authorities of children on their books.
The hours threshold for the provider remains to be defined in secondary legislation at some point after the bill becomes law.
If the provider is part-time they will NOT have to register as an independent educational institution.
The Wellbeing Bill Policy Notes say that “Proprietors of settings who do not wish to register will be required to either change their provision and operate part-time (and so allow the children to receive a suitable full-time education elsewhere) or cease operating. Those proprietors who continue to operate a full-time independent educational institution, without registering, will be committing a criminal offence” [SOURCE = DfE Policy Note Wellbeing Bill page 100]