Reflections on The 'Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill'

Who ultimately owns responsibility for a child’s formation - the family or the state?

That is the quiet but profound question sitting beneath the recent Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill which was updated today, December 15th 2025. So let's talk about this bill...

This new bill indeed contains several well‑intentioned proposals aimed at protecting vulnerable children and improving outcomes. Yet when read carefully, the fine print reveals a deeper shift: one that subtly rebalances authority away from parents and towards the state/government.

This post is not an argument for or against the Bill, it is a reminder that formation matters, that parents and communities have a moral and social right to shape their children and that the government’s role should be to support that responsibility...not quietly absorb it!

Below are three aspects of the Bill that I personally want to reflect on and I hope you will reflect on them too. I have also shared a link to the website at the end of this post, so you can have a look at the Bill for yourself.

1. A “consistent identifier”

One of the most under‑discussed provisions is the introduction of “consistent identifiers for children” (new section 16LB of the Children Act 2004). The stated aim is sensible: improving information‑sharing between safeguarding agencies so vulnerable children do not fall through the cracks. A consistent identifier (a number or code attached to a child across systems) would, in theory, help professionals coordinate care.

The concern is not today’s intention, but tomorrow’s expansion.

The Bill allows the Secretary of State to specify the identifier by regulation. Designated bodies, including education and childcare agencies, must use it when processing information, so long as they believe it “facilitates safeguarding or welfare”. This is a broad and subjective threshold. Safeguarding becomes the justification for routine, system‑wide data linkage.

Parents are given no explicit right to opt out. Consent is not required. Duties of confidence are explicitly overridden. While data protection law is referenced, the architecture being built is permanent. Once every child has a universal identifier embedded across services, future governments can widen its use without revisiting the principle itself.

This is how surveillance can begin, not with blatant control, but with coordination.

Safeguarding children is essential. But we should be honest about what we are constructing: a lifelong data trail that follows every child, regardless of risk, family stability or parental competence. The question isn't can this be used responsibly but who decides how far it goes!

2. Children not in school

Perhaps the clearest shift in power appears in Part 2 of the Bill, “Children not in school”. For years, the legal position in England has been clear: parents have the primary duty to ensure their child receives a suitable education, whether at school or otherwise. The state intervenes when there is evidence of harm or failure.

This Bill changes the tone.

It expands local authority powers to register, monitor and process information about children not attending school. In certain cases, it introduces local authority consent for withdrawing a child from school. Guidance, not primary legislation, will shape how this monitoring operates in practice.

The implication is subtle but significant: educating a child outside the school system is no longer a neutral choice. It becomes a condition that requires oversight. Children not in school are increasingly treated as a safeguarding concern by default, rather than as children whose parents have made a lawful and well informed decision. This disproportionately affects families who home educate for philosophical, pedagogical or religious reasons.

The issue here is not safeguarding genuine cases of neglect because that power already exists. The issue is presumption. When registration, monitoring and data‑sharing are automatic, autonomy quietly turns into suspicion. A free society does not require parents to continually justify why they are raising their children the way they are. It intervenes when harm is present, not when conformity is absent!

3. Centralisation by regulation

Throughout the Bill, a repeated phrase appears: “The Secretary of State may by regulations…” This applies to:

• Designating agencies involved in safeguarding

• Defining consistent identifiers

• Expanding child protection arrangements

• Regulating independent educational institutions

  
  

This matters because regulations and statutory guidance receive far less parliamentary scrutiny than primary legislation. They can be amended, expanded or reinterpreted by future governments with very different philosophies. At the same time, the Bill tightens oversight of independent and unregistered educational provision. Again, the stated aim - preventing unsafe or exploitative settings - is reasonable. But increased inspection powers, broader definitions and prevention orders raise the cost of operating small, community‑based or faith‑led education models.

Nothing in the Bill explicitly bans religious teaching. Nothing directly outlaws alternative curricula. But control rarely arrives as prohibition. It arrives as standards, compliance and suitability assessments which are interpreted through the lens of whoever holds power at the time. When formation is centrally defined, diversity becomes a risk to manage rather than a good to protect.

What the Bill gets right!

It is important to acknowledge the good.

The Bill strengthens support for:

• Children in kinship care

• Care leavers transitioning into adulthood

• Early intervention for genuinely vulnerable children

• Improved coordination between agencies where children are at risk

  
  

These are not trivial gains. Many children have been failed by fragmented systems and reform is needed. But good intentions do not cancel structural consequences.

At Our Future Generation, we believe that formation belongs first to families! Education is not just the transfer of knowledge. It is the shaping of identity, values and worldview. That formation happens first and most powerfully in families and communities. The state has a legitimate role: to protect children from harm, to ensure basic standards and to support parents where needed. It does not have a moral monopoly on what a child should become. When systems assume that children belong to databases before they belong to families, something has shifted.

The real question raised by this Bill is not whether children should be protected. It is whether protection requires control. A healthy society answers differently: it trusts parents, supports communities, intervenes when necessary and resists the temptation to quietly take ownership of formation itself. Because once that line is crossed, it is rarely uncrossed.

While the three areas above raise the most immediate concerns about autonomy and control, they are not the only parts of the Bill that signal a changing relationship between families and the state...

Several additional provisions deserve attention, not because they are alarming in isolation, but because they reinforce the same underlying direction of travel. For example, Independent education and the narrowing space for alternatives...

The Bill expands the regulation of independent educational institutions and strengthens powers to intervene in unregistered settings. The language used focuses on standards, suitability and prevention. Few would argue against tackling genuinely unsafe or exploitative provision.

However, regulation does not affect all providers equally. Large, well‑resourced institutions can absorb compliance costs. Small community‑run, faith‑based or alternative models often cannot. Increased inspection powers, broader definitions and the threat of prevention orders make experimentation risky and innovation fragile.

The effect is not outright prohibition but gradual narrowing. The educational ecosystem becomes less plural, less local and more dependent on central approval.

In a country that has historically valued diversity of schooling, including religious schools, alternative pedagogies and parent‑led provision, this should make us pause and reflect.

None of these measures alone amounts to authoritarian control. That is precisely why they are effective.

However, taken together, they produce a cumulative effect:

• Children are increasingly registered, identified and monitored

• Parents are increasingly supervised rather than trusted

• Communities are increasingly regulated rather than empowered

• Central government gains flexibility, while families gain obligations

  
  

The language of the Bill is careful. It speaks of welfare, safeguarding, standards and best interests. These are powerful words and rightly so. But they are also words that can justify almost any level of intervention if not bounded by a strong presumption of parental authority. A society reveals its values not only by what it forbids, but by what it assumes. This Bill assumes that the default condition of childhood is one that requires oversight. That is a philosophical choice, not a neutral one.

Children are not merely future workers, citizens or data points. They are moral beings in formation and families are needed for these formative process!

This formation cannot be standardised without losing something essential. When the state expands its role from protector to planner, from supporter to supervisor, it inevitably shapes formation, even if unintentionally. Decisions about curricula, standards, acceptable values and welfare thresholds all carry philosophical weight. That is why parental autonomy is not a selfish demand. It is a recognition that formation is relational, not bureaucratic. Parents are not infallible. Communities can fail. That is why safeguarding exists. But safeguarding is strongest when it is targeted, proportionate and exceptional, not ambient and universal.

So...who ultimately owns responsibility for a child’s formation - the family or the state?

That question is not rhetorical.

If the answer is the state, then this Bill makes sense. Central coordination, data integration, oversight and regulation are logical tools.

If the answer is parents, families and communities (with the state as a supporter and safeguard) then the direction of travel should concern us.

A free and healthy society does not treat parental responsibility as a risk to be managed. It treats it as a good to be protected. The debate we need is not about whether children should be safe. It is about whether safety requires surrendering autonomy. Because once the state quietly takes responsibility for formation, parents are left not as stewards, but as participants - allowed to contribute but no longer trusted to lead. That is a future worth debating now, while there is still room to choose differently.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill - https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3909