From March 18th 2025, the Children Not In School clauses of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill also apply to Wales as well as England.
Background
In March 2025 a month after the Bill had already been scrutinised in committee at Westminster it was announced that certain measures would also be extended to Wales, even though education is devolved in Wales, ie Wales is able to make its own education laws.
On March 10th 2025 Lynn Neagle, Cabinet Secretary for Education in Wales, issued a statement saying “we have discussed the Bill with the UK government and have asked that certain provisions within the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, be applied to Wales in the same way as England.” [LINK]
Provisions extended to Wales were added to the Bill at Report in the House of Commons on March 18th and are now included in the current version of the Bill as presented to the House of Lords on March 19th.
On March 24th the Welsh Government laid a Legislative Consent Memorandum (LCM) on the Bill before the Senedd [LINK] NB although the LCM was not published until after the Bill was reprinted with provisions added for Wales plus new numbering for the House of Lords, it still uses the pre-March 18th numbering.
According to this page, the Business Committee made referrals to the Children, Young People and Education Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee with a reporting deadline of 16 May 2025
My Comments
The Department for Education in England did not need to add “in Wales” throughout the CNIS clauses. From First Reading in the Commons up till Report on the afternoon of March 18th the Bill was not making specific references to England only, instead it proposed to insert new sections before section 437 of the Education Act 1996, which would replace s 437, and then to say that 437 would only apply to Wales.
Section 437 is about School Attendance Orders [SAOs] and currently applies to England and Wales. Read my page on SAOs here https://edyourself.org/school-attendance-orders/
Hence the main change to the Bill from March 18th 2025 was NOT just adding multiple references to Wales, but – significantly – replacing s 437 in Wales as well as in England. Should the bill become law the whole of the new fast-track School Attendance Order process including much higher penalties if convicted of breaching the order, will apply across the board to Wales as well as to England, for education [Condition A], for safeguarding [Condition B], and for not complying with registration requirements [Conditions C and D]