Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department made of the adequacy of the use of single unique identifiers for schools, in the context of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to introduce a single unique identifier (SUI) for children is based on extensive user research, including engagement with schools and education settings. Our 2023 report, ‘Improving multi-agency information sharing’, highlighted that while schools use identifiers such as the unique pupil number (UPN), these are not recognised across other agencies that process and share information relating to safeguarding and welfare, creating fragmentation and risk.

To address this, the department began pilot activity in April 2025 to test the feasibility of using the NHS number as a consistent identifier within health and children’s social care. Future piloting will test this across wider safeguarding partners, including education. The intention is not to replace identifiers that are currently used in education, but to design how the SUI can work alongside existing identifiers to improve information sharing and strengthen safeguarding.