May 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has received royal assent and is now the Children’s
Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026. It was published here in early May.
The chapter which affects home educators can be found under the heading Children Not In School
sections 37-42 in Part 2 of the Act. The measures will apply to Wales as well as England and the
start times will be different for each country as they develop their own versions of regulations and
guidance.
The law will not change before 2027. We do not have exact dates for when the new law will come
into force because it will depend how long it takes to pull all the details together since so much as
been left to regulation and guidance.
At the end of May 2026 the Minister was only prepared to say that new law would be in place by “the end of the Parliament” which takes us to mid 2029.
For the same reason we cannot say at this point how home visits for newly registered families will
operate under the new system because it will be set out in new guidance which has yet to be
formulated and agreed.
The Department for Education has written to local authorities in England here reminding
them that until the new law is in place, existing legislation and current home education guidance
still apply. DfE has asked home education support organisations to share these letters. There is also
a government letter for parents here.
Below is an extract from the government’s letter to LAs
“Whilst Parliament has passed the Act, these measures are not yet in force and implementation will
not be immediate. Please ensure that you continue to adhere to existing legislation and guidance,
including the Elective Home Education guidance (2019) for local authorities, which remains
current. We will contact you again in due course with further details regarding when the Children
Not in School measures will come into force.
To guide implementation, we will be holding a consultation on draft statutory guidance and on the
policy content of associated regulations. We would encourage you to share your views via the
consultation once it is launched and to also share it with home-educating parents in your area.
Evidence collected through the consultation will also help to inform our assessment of the new
burdens for local authorities which will result from the implementation of the Children Not in
School measures. This will ensure that local authorities can receive appropriate funding to meet the
implications of these new burdens. We will share further details about the consultation in due
course.”
When it goes live the consultation will appear on DfE’s consultation hub
https://consult.education.gov.uk/ and will be open to individuals as well as organisations. HEAS will be submitting a response.
Deregistration – Section 37
In the future, once all the consultations have been completed and the secondary legislation is in
place, some parents will need permission from the local authority before being able to deregister
their child from school. This will apply to children on roll at a special school (or equivalent in
Wales) or if there has been a Child Protection Plan in place within the past 5 years. It will also apply
if there is an ongoing child protection enquiry.
In these specific scenarios the local authority must refuse consent for home education if it
“considers that it would be in the child’s best interests to receive education by regular attendance at
school.” If the local authority refuses consent, parents will have to wait 6 months before asking
again.
The new deregistration law is set out in section 37 of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act
2026. It will not apply to all children with an EHCP, only to children registered at a special school.
Section 37 also provides for mandatory meetings with the local authority before a child is taken out
of school. Initially this will be trialled in 30% of local authorities and will start up to 2 years after the
rest of the new law.
Children Not In School Register – Section 38
In the future, once all the secondary legislation is in place, local authorities will have to keep a
register of children not in school and parents will have to supply information for the register.
Parents will not have to report every time something changes, but every three months the local
authority will be able to ask if there are any updates for the register.
Details of what is required for the register are set out in section 38 of the Children’s Wellbeing and
Schools Act 2026. An important element of the required information is details about providers above a certain number of
hours which has not yet been decided and will have to be agreed in regulations.
In addition, the local authority will have to “consider where the child lives” within 15 days of
registration and if it chooses to do so, the LA will be able to request a home visit. Home educating
families who have been known to the local authority for years will still be newly registered under
the new law and the same home visit rules will apply. The visits are not mandatory but the local
authority can start the School Attendance Order process if parents refuse.
School Attendance Orders – Section 39
In the future, once all the secondary legislation is in place, the local authority must send notices to
start the School Attendance Order process for children subject to a child protection enquiry or who
have been on a Child Protection Plan within the last 5 years. Parents will then have to satisfy the
local authority that home education is in the child’s best interests.
The local authority will also be able to send notices to start the School Attendance Order process if
parents have failed to comply with registration requirements, such as not supplying all the
information requested, or refusing a home visit when asked.
Once the School Attendance Order process has begun, the local authority will be able to request
further home visits and again escalate if visits are refused. A School Attendance Order requires the
parent to register the child at school and if the parent does not do so, then the local authority may
opt to take them to court where if found guilty, parents will be subject to higher fines and could in
the most serious cases receive a short prison sentence.
Fiona Nicholson https://edyourself.org/
February 2026
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Still Not Law
In December 2024 the government introduced the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to parliament. The measures set out in the bill for “Children Not In School” will directly affect parents wishing to home educate their child in future as well as families who are already home educating. The bill has almost finished all the required parliamentary stages and is expected to become an Act of Parliament around Easter 2026.
The home education chapter of the bill has undergone some significant changes since it left the House of Commons in March 2025.
Secondary Legislation
Getting a new Act of Parliament onto the statute books in the form of primary legislation is only the first step in getting a law changed. A new Act of Parliament cannot exist in a vacuum; it requires secondary legislation in the form of regulations and new statutory guidance so there will have to be public consultations on regulations after the bill becomes an Act.
It is very important to be aware that an Act of Parliament does not cause an immediate switchover to the new system and that in the meantime, all the current law remains in place and all the current national guidance still applies.
England And Wales
The most directly relevant part of the Wellbeing Bill for home educators is the Children Not In School chapter. Initially this only applied to England but in March 2025 the government expanded it to include Wales, apparently at the request of the Welsh government. The government keeps saying it is about knowing where children are and that children are “seen”.
Consent For Withdrawal Best Interests
In future parents would have to obtain local authority approval before children in certain categories deemed to be potentially vulnerable could be taken out of school for home education. The categories relate to safeguarding and also to children on roll at special schools. Government ministers have been adamant that local authorities should not and would not start child protection enquiries purely because a parent has decided to home-educate.
The child will remain on roll during the decision-making process and the usual penalties for unauthorised absence will apply. There is no time limit or deadline by which the local authority has to make a decision. If the decision is a No then parents may not ask again for 6 months.
Under the safeguarding heading, consent for withdrawal from school will be required for a child subject to a child protection plan OR where there has been a child protection plan in the last 5 years OR there is a current and ongoing child protection enquiry. It will be up the local authority to decide whether home education is in a child’s “best interests”.
Extending consent for withdrawal to child protection plans going back 5 years came very late in the parliamentary process. It was agreed in the House of Lords on January 28th 2026.
New Compulsory Register
In future, home educating parents will be required to register with the local council and to supply information about people involved in the child’s education. The School Attendance Order process will be used as a sanction for parents who fail to comply. For most of the bill’s time in parliament, the government was insistent that parents would have to report every change of provider in minute detail but in January 2026 concessions were made and this was cut back.
In a late change said to be prompted by the tragic case of Sara Sharif, the bill also now says that the local authority must “consider where the child lives” and may request to visit the home within 15 days of a child going on the new “Children Not In School” register. If a visit request is refused then the local authority can escalate to formal action and within the formal action process there will be further stages when a visit may be requested and where a refusal will allow the local authority to take steps towards issuing a School Attendance Order.
School Attendance Orders
School Attendance Orders will be the main sanction for parents who do not comply with the new law and the SAO process is to be made quicker with penalties for breaching the order increased to bring them into line with truancy penalties, that is to say the maximum fines will be increased and at the top end of the scale a prison sentence can be imposed.
Pilot Scheme Mandatory Meeting
Again said to be prompted by the review into the death of Sara Sharif, the Wellbeing Bill now provides for a pilot in England and Wales whereby families wishing to home educate will have to take part in a mandatory meeeting with the local authority (NOT the school unless parents wish the school to be involved) before a child’s name can be removed from the school roll.
The pilot scheme will operate in no more than 30% of local authorities and will be tested for 2 years, after which it may be changed or rolled out nationally or just stop altogether. At this point we know nothing more about the pilot and it will depend on secondary legislation being drawn up after the bill becomes law. A pilot scheme usually involves local authorities putting themselves forward as volunteers to try out a new process.
Regulations And Guidance
Obtaining information about providers and having providers supply details of children on their books are key elements of the bill. The government believes these measures will enable the local authority to know where a child is spending time and be helpful for flagging up illegal schools as well as potentially leading to the discovery of children who are eligible for registration.
One of the major policy areas which will remain to be decided after the bill becomes law relates to education providers. Individuals and organisations delivering education “for more than the prescribed amount of time” will be obliged to pass on names and addresses of children on their books to the local authority, facing fines if they don’t comply. A number of commentators have pointed out that this is likely to have a negative effect on choice in education as providers may just opt to withdraw their services to home educators.
The government has steadily resisted defining “prescribed amount of time” in the bill. To make things even more complicated, the bill puts forward a number of possible ways of calculating the “prescribed amount of time” plus adding exemptions so that the provider duty is proportionate and captures only those the government wants included.
Another significant area where there will have to be a full public consultation after the bill receives Royal Assent is in relation to new statutory guidance on home education. Readers may recall that the government consulted on draft guidance in 2023 but this was not finalised before the general election and the new Labour government then opted to change the law instead.
In theory, any new draft guidance issued for consultation later in 2026 should be quite distinct and different from the earlier draft, but we do know that governments like to recycle previous material rather than start from scratch so it remains to be seen what will actually appear.
A third area of controversy and concern which is still to be decided in secondary legislation relates to exemptions for having to supply contact details for both parents.
Fiona Nicholson is publishing regular updates about the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which you can find linked from this page https://edyourself.org/childrens-wellbeing-schools-bill/
January 2025Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill 2025
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was introduced to parliament at the end of 2024. It was not unexpected given that it was announced in the King’s Speech after the general election in July 2024.
The bill covers a number of areas in relation to children’s social care and academy schools, as well as proposals for compulsory registration of children educated outside school.
The Parallel Parliament site has a good starting page about the bill https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/bills/2024-26/childrenswellbeingandschools
There is a defined process which has to be followed when the government wishes to bring in a new law; it does not happen quickly. The bill has to go all the way through both Houses of Parliament with many days of scrutiny and debate at each stage. For more details on what to expect in the coming months, plus relevant links, we recommend Fiona Nicholson’s article here https://edyourself.org/childrens-wellbeing-schools-bill/
Meanwhile of course the current law remains in place and current guidance still applies.