Section 38 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 [LINK] makes provision for local authorities to keep registers of Children Not In School, with parents having to supply information for the register.
Home visits to newly registered home educating families were added to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill very late in the parliamentary process.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill received royal assent on April 29th 2026 and is now an Act of Parliament [LINK].
The new measures cannot come into force until the necessary secondary legislation is completed by way of public consultation on regulations and new statutory guidance, which will not be until 2027 at the earliest.
What Act Says
“Before the end of the period of 15 days beginning with the day on which the local authority registers a child under this section, the local authority—
(a) must consider where the child lives, and
(b) may request the child’s parent to allow the local authority to visit the child inside any of the homes in which the child lives.
If a request under subsection (8)(b) is refused by the person to whom it is made, the local authority must consider that to be a relevant factor in determining whether to serve a preliminary notice under section 436H.”
Preliminary Notice
Information about the preliminary notice under section 436H can be found in section 39 of the Wellbeing Act [LINK] which deals with School Attendance Orders.
In other words, the Wellbeing Act says that in future the School Attendance Order process could be STARTED if parents refuse a request for a home visit.
My Comments
The government is not saying that the local authority must visit all new families in the first 15 days. It is difficult to see how this could be achieved anyway with the tens of thousands of families who are already home educating and who will all have a duty to register at exactly the same time as soon as the law comes into force.
Home educators who are already known to the local authority will still be NEW TO THE REGISTER and therefore be within scope of these measures in exactly the same way as a newly deregistered family.
Rather the Act seems to be implying that a local authority may ask to visit the home to meet the child at the start of home education if the LA chooses to do so. There is a huge variation in the size of local authorities in terms of travel time and also in the numbers of home educated children though, so it is difficult to see how – or whether – the government will fund this new measure.
Of course, a local authority might request visits of everyone in the expectation that many/most would refuse, which would have the twin benefits of not only leaving a manageable number of visits in terms of staff time, but would also allow a formal investigation to be triggered at the LA’s discretion in as many of the refusers’ cases as they wanted, thereby reducing home education numbers.
Government Policy Notes also say something different from the Act itself; as seen in the quote below.
“The assessment of the home would be based on whether the environments are conducive to the child receiving a suitable education or where relevant, whether it is conducive to education outside of school being in their best interests. In making this assessment, we would expect local authorities to record any known risks with the home environment or other learning environments that might impact a child receiving a suitable education – this could for example include reports of overcrowding, excessive noise, etc.” [Policy Notes page 89]
It therefore remains to be clarified whether the purpose of the visit is to assess the condition of the home or to assess the child’s education.
More details are needed on what it is exactly that local authorities are supposed to be checking; the proportion of families they expect would be asked for a visit; what funding will be available for all these visits; and also to reflect on who will actually be carrying out the visits and how much they might know about home education or special educational needs or neurodiversity or school trauma.
There is also the issue of what else might happen during a home visit such as expecting to go through a checklist, or to question children or to see the child’s work.