Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill

[HomeEdMum84]

I'm wondering how many of us are aware of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the catastrophic impact it will have on all children and families, but especially those who are home educated and/or have SEND (including trauma or mental health difficulties)?

This Bill will erode parental rights, force compliance with threats of penalties and persecution, and give unprecedented power to local authorities.

The potential for maliciousness and misuse is terrifying and there is no regard for the impact this potential abuse of power will have on children and families, it's all about State control.

There's still a chance to do something about it if everyone rallies together like contacting your MP and members of the House of Lords to express your concerns, trying to generate local media interest, there's quite a few petitions and open letters to sign, sharing social media posts from various sources but especially people like the solicitor Michael Charles on FB, charities and organisations to contact for help or even just letting people you know know what the Bill entails so everyone is aware 🙏

Is this the bill that responds to cases like that of Sara Sharif and allows local authorities to keep track of children's well being and whether children are actually receiving an education or not?

If so, what specifically are the clauses you are worried about?

I am not familiar with the detail of the bill, so you'll have to tell us what exactly you're worried about.

If it is about the state having a duty to check on kids who are home educated or refusing school etc, then I absolutely support that. Decent parents will have nothing to hide. And vulnerable children deserve to be protected.

I've read a summary of the bill now. While I think there are wider issues around the education and wellbeing of children that could potentially have been tackled in the bill but aren't, I can't really find anything that is in it (from what I've read) that would cause concern. Details here:

https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/12/the-childrens-wellbeing-bill-what-parents-need-to-know/

I assume that it is the checks on children not in school which are worrying you, but this is long overdue. I'm sure that most HE parents do a great job of educating their kids, and they will be able to carry on doing so. This is about protecting the minority of children who are in need of intervention.

As a HE parent I don’t mind terribly much about checks but I do wonder how the LA will ever manage to keep up with being updated every single time my child attends a new event. I’ll be needing to inform them several times a week, construction site visit this week, cooking class. If we start a gym class or piano lessons or do a one off event at the wetlands. Duplicate that for the few hundred home Ed children in each LA and I imagine we’ll all be seeing an increase in council tax pretty soon to staff it.

I’m completely bemused they’ve rejected all sensible amendments on this issue for example only informing if regular or a particular length of time. It is utterly ridiculous my kids Rainbow leader volunteers may now be expected to report to the LA annually.

Oh the “if you have nothing to hide” ignorance 🙄 Classic. Maybe read the full bill and see how this is the thin end of the wedge for ALL families. If this bill passes in its current form it will start an insidious, subtle shift from parents making decisions about what is best for their children to the state making the decisions. All families everywhere.

Worrying clauses:

Giving full unchecked powers to unqualified LA staff to enter homes for no reason based on nothing. No recourse for malicious staff who know nothing about how children actually learn, what home education is and who have no training on SEND issues or medical issues (many HE children have SEND and have been failed by the education system). LA staff are untrained generally and just regular, average people.

The power for the state to track and record the every movement of my children just because they are home educated even though there are no child welfare concerns.
The bill puts the focus on HE families when it fails to protect children like Sara Sharif who were known to Surrey social services all her life as being very high risk. Home educated children are statistically at LESS risk of harm than school children yet the bill assumes guilt for no reason other than it wants control over us as it is panicked at the sheer number of children being deregistered from school daily. The bill uses poor poor Sara Sharif as a scapegoat to pass this bill.

The government needs to get its own house in order before it comes after mine. It needs to look in the mirror and analyze WHY so many people are choosing to HE and why school is failing so many. It needs to use the legislation that ALREADY EXISTS to protect children at risk (most of whom are in school and ‘visible’) before passing new legislation that will achieve nothing in the way of protection.

And finally the bill, which is very very long and waffly does not once use the word ‘wellbeing’ as it fails to address actual wellbeing of children anywhere. All it is is an ideological power grab that has been rushed through and ill thought out.

Thankfully the House of Lords have seen the bill for what it is and all its flaws and are making amendments.

The bill has an appalling lack of protections against abuse. A single employee - who could have any kind of motive, or simply be wrong - can immediately withdraw the right to home educate a child. That then opens a parent up to criminal prosecution for not sending their child every day to a place the state dictates: they can't even freely choose the school, and certainly have no control over what happens there. It's pretty scary.

A state school education is offered to each child. It should absolutely not be mandatory.

No adult is forced by the state to go to a place of the state's choosing - no matter the personal impact or risk of danger - and with no recourse. Not unless they have been sentenced to jail for a crime (with the protection of trial by jury) or they've signed up for the army (which is so ethically tricky that we have a minimum age).

We're always free to walk out of any job or situation if we need to. Why would we allow the state such power over children - who are far more vulnerable - when we know that schools are physically and emotionally far more risky environments than most places of work?

It's also wrong on principle, even without the risk of misuse.

It's a dangerous removal of the really important priciple that children are free human beings (just like adults) and that when they are too young to make choices safely, parents are best placed to make those choices on their child's behalf. (there needs to be a very good reason for the state to step in).

School does not necessarily provide the best education for a child, nor is it always the best place for them to be for those crucial 14 years.

It's huge over reach for the state to decide it knows best.

The bill certainly won't protect children like Sara Sharif from harm. As a pp said, she was known to social services from birth. They already had the power through existing laws to remove her from danger, but very sadly they made the wrong call.

They have a devastating, dangerously high case load of children at serious risk. How can adding the overhead of monitoring pointless box-ticking by well-meaning, alternative-view mums possibly actually help children who are genuinely at risk?

But it's much easier to assert control over well-meaning, law-abiding people than to deal with complex, challenging situations where children are at risk.

Lanyard politics at its worst.

Very much agree. I'd always thought that HE parents would be keeping track of their activities/learning anyway, it seems like just formalising this?

Is this the bill that removes the appeals/tribunals for SEND as well? No more EHCP, if the LA doesn’t want to assess your child, then it wont.

Yes very aware of it and the very concerning content.
FYI there is a march against it (plus other education issues) on Sunday!
My concern is that majority of parents who have kids in school/home school etc AREN'T aware of it.
Too many people just not aware of damage being wrought on education by this government. They had chance to make things better after Tories yet they are actively making everything worse all whilst twittering on about "free breakfasts clubs" which don't even get me started on!

It really is not ‘formalizing’ anything.

HE parents already report their child’s learning to the LA. We are already on a local register. Of course we keep track of our child’s activities and learning. It’s literally what we do all day everyday. And then we report on it once a year as the law states.

This bill is proposing we provide the most minuscule, minute by minute accounts of where our children are and who they are with and what they are doing at ALL times. It asks providers of learning so for example scout or brownie leaders, swimming instructors, maths tutors, jujitsu instructors, grandparents, literally anyone and everything they do everyday to report back on them every time they have any contact. It only asks this of HE kids. Can you imagine being a scout leader and having to report on certain children every single time you see them. It’s ridiculous.

Not only is this completely unworkable and onerous, who is going to process this data?? The local authority staff in my area are swamped with basic registrations of HE kids as there are so many being take out of school now and not enough staff to keep up, it also opens up a whole can of worms in relation to data. No one else is monitored to this level. No one else’s every move is monitored this way. Can they guarantee they will keep my child’s whereabouts and all the data on them safe? We hear ALL the time of councils and organizations having data breaches etc.

I'd maybe be a bit more concerned if i believed LA had any money to do any of this effectively but I'll believe it when i see it.

I don’t think the state is competent to make decisions about what’s the best available education for a child, I think parents are, unless there’s evidence of incompetence or abuse.

The idea of a government employee having the power to dictate my choices for my child, is outrageous.

Totally agree. In what world is an unqualified local authority staff member/government employee allowed to make decisions as to what is best for my children over me and my husband?!

And yes if there is a safeguarding concern over a particular child, please for gods sake use the safeguarding legislation and procedures that ALREADY EXIST to protect them.

Many of us home educators feel that we have been scapegoated over the terrible death of poor Sara Sharif and the likes of her. She was known to Surrey social services since she was in the womb! For ten years! Her school raised concerns many times. She couldn’t have been more ‘visible’ yet the government lead the public to think that because the monster deregistered her from school for a matter of weeks home education is a safeguarding risk 🙄

I know this is kind of a joke, but do you see the problem?

They already can't complete work which is critical to children's safety.

This bill will cause inconvenience to home-educating families - resulting in those children having fewer educational experiences due to artificial barriers - whilst not bringing any benefit at all to anyone (apart from the Government getting to pretend they're doing something - lanyard politics). How is the bar this low?!?

And I share concerns about appropriate care of the large amounts of new personal information on children. Information they have no sensible reason to hold in the first place - especially if they don't have the capacity to do anything meaningful with it! So much for GDPR (only holding personal information when you have good reason to).

I'm not a home educator. But I think it's important for it to remain an option, and important for children to be supported in their education, whichever form it takes. Making their education more difficult, and so likely reducing it - with no genuine benefits as a trade-off - is the opposite of supporting them.

But it's all part and parcel of Labour wanting more state control of children. Same as VAT to force closures of independent schools + force more kids into state, same as the policies which result in private nurseries closing to push more parents into state run ones. It is sinister and basec purely on reducing parental choice/options so all children are funnelled into state run institutions.

I’d have less of a problem with this if it were overt and well-funded. If they openly said, we want to outlaw parental choice/independent schools/religious schools/home ed. ‘We want to reduce the impacts of multiculturalism/dissident views and inculcate the nation’s children in our state-chosen ideologies.’ Then we could debate that.
This bill is particularly egregious because it entrenches the inequality for disabled children at special schools, whose parents already have fewer rights to withdraw them if they aren’t thriving.

I'll read and reply to the comments as soon as I can but these videos explain our concerns very well for those who would like to know more.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1CBhCj86uP/

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/15W2FQEhUp/

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1APg65Ppic/

There's also the 'March For Children' protest is this weekend, 18th May, in London.

This bill is diabolical, it is basically taking parents rights over their children away , we are all ready told when a where we can tske our own children on holiday , if they are sick to often you get fined , I do not want to be constantly followed around my home or to constantly have to call the LA everything we do something for HE , if I did 7 minutes work with my son it would still be more of an education than he ever got in a lesson at school ! Because the schools are diabolical and all they care about is looking good on paper and having the best offstead reports and the best exam results , I certainly dont want my child being tracked 24,7 digitally, that anyone anywhere could hack in to , no thank you .

The Cyber Waffle YT channel has just put out a video on this subject and quotes/shows the OP's post near the beginning!

This will hopefully bring more attention to this and he already has over 6,000 views after 2 hours.

Well articulated. 👏👏👏