Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Wilcox of Newport Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

I declare that I am a vice-president of the LGA.

My 35 years as a teacher, working in such diverse areas as south London and south Wales, give me a little insight into this subject. Despite the differences in the demographics of London and Wales, there is a golden thread that runs through that experience. Teachers arrive at school every day to do the best for the pupils in their care, and children and young people, on the whole, want to learn and enjoy their school experience. We saw how that was profoundly impacted by the pandemic, and the road to recovery continues.

The Bill brings important changes that this Labour Government want to provide for our children and young people. I am pleased that the Government are acting on a long-standing call by the LGA for councils to have and maintain children not in school registers, something we almost achieved in opposition during the passage of the now abandoned Schools Bill.

Unique identifiers for children are a very welcome step, facilitating better information sharing and, most importantly, adding to the security and safety of the child. It is positive that, within the responsibilities of corporate parenting, there is now a legal undertaking for local authorities to collaborate with each other when performing their corporate parenting duty. An important further addition is that councils will have greater powers to direct school admissions, and failing council-maintained schools will not automatically become academies.

The Bill will legislate to allow councils to open schools again and make academies follow reformed national teacher pay scales and conditions—a long overdue reform of the Academies Act 2010. Furthermore, the Bill amends that Act so that, as well as being “balanced and broadly based”, an academy’s curriculum must include the national curriculum, and this is intended to apply to the revised curriculum following the conclusion of the current review.

An important safeguarding measure is that parents will lose their automatic right to home-educate if their child is subject to a child protection investigation or plan, and councils will get powers to require school attendance if they find a child’s home environment unsuitable or unsafe. The Bill will make sure that teachers and schools are always involved in decisions around safeguarding children in their area. It is often in the school environment where issues are picked up first. Teachers have much insight of and provide much care to the pupils in their charge, but they have not always been included or considered in such decisions.

While education and social care policy and decisions are devolved in Wales, children’s welfare, safeguarding and protecting children’s rights are a key focus of the work of the Welsh Government. It is therefore appropriate that discussions have already taken place regarding the areas that could apply to the children and young people of Wales. The Bill strengthens existing UK legislation relating to child protection, children not in school and children’s social care in both countries. This will benefit from additional measures and will support local authorities and partners to meet their safeguarding duties. The Welsh Government have asked that certain provisions within the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill be applied to Wales in the same way as England. The areas that will currently apply include children in secure accommodation, the extension of the offence of ill treatment of a child by a care worker to cover 16 and 17 year-olds, and children not in school. I believe that other areas may be included at a later stage.

In conclusion, this is an innovative Bill, allowing for the scrutiny that is the hallmark of this Chamber, but I hope it gets on the statute book sooner rather than later. We owe it to children and young people in every part of our nations and regions.