One of the clauses of the CWS Bill that the Welsh Government are seeking to apply to Wales.

What are the problems with this?

What’s the problem with this?

The presumption behind the perceived need for a “register” is that parents and families cannot be trusted.

A child not being on a council list is not “missing” or invisible, they are just not on a council list. The myth that registers are protective is explored here:

This isn’t just a “register” – these are extensive and complex databases.

Crucially, this register is not just a list of names of children for make informal enquiries in the way that happens at present. These are extensive databases with large volumes of personal information about each child. With so much unknown about how this data will be used, stored, shared, managed, and how long for.

With no apparent safeguards or measures in place for if and when these databases are hacked for nefarious purposes. Having extensive databases labelled “Children Not in School”, which include considerable information about their daily whereabouts could be considered to be something of a particularly interesting target for those with criminal intent.

A “register” isn’t going to be a deterrent to anyone already committing serious criminal offences

Abusers are already committing crimes that they know would carry heavy custodial sentences – the threat of fines for clerical omissions is hardly going to be a deterrent.

Those neglecting children are hardly going to be diligent about such clerical duties either

Leaving those that are diligent and care about their children and their families’ welling to be the ones that are impacted. The “vast majority” that the Welsh Government claim that this LCM is “not about”.

For any children not in school who are being abused or neglected,
the very real danger is that this measure pushes any abused children further away from chance of help and seeing statutory services.
It creates a deterrent to abusers from allowing access to statutory services.

The Welsh government thought about mandatory registration before and decided against it because it was felt it would damage the wellbeing of children.

The Welsh Government claim that the reasons for these proposed measures are nothing to do with the “vast majority” of home educators, only about a “tiny minority”.

But the Labour Welsh Government have previously stated in the Senedd that they would not pursue a path of mandatory registration because they appreciated that to do so would place children at increased risk of harm.

Because of the “very real unintended consequences”.

Consequences that would be detrimental to families who are and who seek to safeguard their children,

Who seek to protect their ability to advocate for and protect their children’s rights to education and wellbeing, by placing them in positions where they may feel the Government are “driving them away from statutory services”.

Driving away from statutory services removes access to the safeguarding they offer, as well as the services themselves.

Abusers may at present still use statutory services such as healthcare or other provisions. These services offer a vital safeguarding role where signs of abuse can be detected and reported to the appropriate agencies.

Placing deterrents to use of statutory services such as free NHS healthcare provision is detrimental to the wellbeing of any children if they were being abused. It places obstacles both to their receipt of healthcare and the opportunity for such services to detect and act upon any signs of abuse.

That deterrent is also detrimental to the wellbeing of children in loving homes where the parents and families seek to protect their children’s rights to a suitable education and believe that the involvement of council employees would be detrimental or inhibitory to this.

It would be detrimental to the wellbeing of families who believe that the imposition of such a register is ethically and morally wrong.

Home educating families want open access to healthcare for their children, healthcare where they can feel confident that confidentiality would be respected and be able to have open discussions and conversations with healthcare staff about their children. Do read this research report “Confidentiality and Respect” that explores the desire of home educators for access to confidential healthcare and the negative impact of placing deterrents and obstacles to that home educators can experience when seeking to access this.

Threatening and coercive behaviour towards loving parents

In these measures, the state does not just move towards a coparenting position, but also takes on the persona of a demanding, punitive and coercive one too.

Does that sound too strong?

Well, this is addressed and explored in this linked article,

Are there any precedents of such databases that can help decide if safe and beneficial, or if unsafe and detrimental?

Yes.

But the DfE at Westminster seem to have conveniently forgotten about these.

We trust that the Senedd will be able to appreciate and learn from these.

For example, ContactPoint

Previous attempt at national databases of children.

Had to be abandoned, because it was considered to be unsafe, to cause more harm and risk to the safeguarding of children than any potential benefit.

Michael Gove said of ContactPoint in 2009.

• “We will spend less on vast centralised IT databases which always go expensively wrong, such as the misguided effort to log every child in the country through the Contactpoint system”
• “I say every child but of course the children of celebrities and MPs will be able to be excluded in case of security breaches.
• Well, if the system isn’t secure enough for me it isn’t secure enough for you, so it must go.”

Yet here the DfE propose extensive databases to “log every” EHE child in the country

We already have data

Schools already under mandatory duty inform the LA when a child is deregistered (School attendance Pupil Registration Regulations from only 2024, section 9 replacing Pupil Registration Regulations 2006.

Does it duplicate that duty? Or replace it?

No evaluation or comparison of this in English risk assessments

Data is already held in the Common Transfer System for both England and Wales. To quote some of the evidence already provided to Westminster, but which is repeatedly overlooked:

“Today if a child is withdrawn from a school with a known destination of another school, their record is transferred directly to the receiving school through the Common Transfer System. All maintained schools in England and Wales have a statutory responsibility to use the Common Transfer System (CTS) to transfer specific information electronically, via s2s when a pupil joins or leaves a school. If a child is withdrawn from a school and is not transferred on to a new school but is expected to, then the pupil’s data from their school registration record is moved into the national “Lost Pupils Database”, a secure area of the DfE controlled data transfer system S2S where pupil files will be sent and stored when the pupil’s destination is not known or the pupil has moved out of the maintained sector for example abroad. These are named records… In addition, Local Authorities record this as a child missing education (CME).

What happens to all the data on these extensive databases (“registers”)?

How long will LAs store this for? When will it be deleted? Who will have access to it? Who will it be shared with?

What rights to children and parents have to see what is being held about them on these extensive databases?

Reuse for the police is vague in the Bill and needs clarification 

Any data at local level may end up at national level or beyond without safeguards in place, as ever more data is linked for connected purposed without consent or knowledge of the data subjects. What safeguards are in place once data is collected about children, families, the education providers by the Secretary of State/Ministers about how it may be distributed and re-used by law enforcement and for what connected purposes?

Is this not some form of digital ID for EHE children and young people?
Didn’t the Senedd reject the idea of digital ID?

What about the voice of the child? Do they have any say?

Ummmm – No.

But aren’t these measures meant to be about hearing the voice of the child?

Not if the voice says “No”, it would seem.

Yet the voice of the child is meant to be important, the concept is even used as justification for these measures.

The present Cabinet Secretary for Education in Wales has repeated pressed how important the “voice of the child” is.

Only two days after the original date to vote on the CWS Bill LCM, the Cabinet Secretary for Education told CYPE (Children’s Young People’s and Education) Committee, when speaking of other issues, that

“We have to listen to the voices of children in the work that we do”

But the children of Wales have had no say in the very measures she seeks to apply to Wales from CWS Bill,

And remember – this isn’t just in cases of significant concern;
this is for ALL EHE children and young people.

To quote further from that evidence submitted to Westminster,

(again points that were not addressed there)

There is a complex multi-way relationship between the rights of the child (different at stages of development with and without and capacity), the rights of the parent, and obligations placed on the provider by this change of law. The new duty is on the parents to register the child, but the child has no say in the matter. The provider is asked to breach the rights of the child (and the parent’s) to privacy and override (families’ choices) to not register”

There seems to be no consideration that children, including young people who are “Gillick competent” may probably not consent to being on these registers, to having their data stored and shared in this way.

There is no mechanism of consideration for what to do when this happens- for when young people refuse consent and parents are under a legal duty to override that consent.

Indeed, the proposals of the CWS Bill run contrary to the author, the DfE at Westminster’s own declarations.

For example, the DfE’s Research Report “A consistent identifier in education and children’s services” 2016 (Section 3: Using IT Systems to Share Information) found:

“Consent from children, young people and parents must be obtained before information is shared. This is a complex area and people need to be clear about exactly what they are giving consent for and when they have a choice to opt out. A clear statement on consent should be issued before any new systems are implemented.”

Do parents and children get to see and amend what’s on these extensive databases? What rights of appeal or complaint do they have on what is on them and how they are used?

As the “registers” demand that data of ALL parents is held on these databases, then does that give ALL parents the right to see what is held on them?
What are the implications of this for separated or divorced parents, including those going through custody cases?

What are the implications of this in cases of domestic violence and abuse, in cases of coercive control?

How can errors in these extensive databases be challenged and corrected?

How can differences in opinion on what has been entered onto these be challenged?

New section 436F(1) requires local authorities to provide prescribed information from their registers to the Secretary of State (in practice the Department for Education in England) and “Welsh Ministers” (in practice civil servants),

How much data? What will it be used for? Who will have access to it? How often will such data be requested? How long will it be stored for? On individual children or anonymised? and for how long would data remain accurate?  

Note – there are no rights of complaint or appeal given to children and parents.

There is no provision for independent complaints, appeal, mediation, advocacy or tribunal service on how these databases are stored or used, no mechanism to have any errors, misunderstandings, discriminatory or biased statements or overstepping in remit challenged.

Compare this to not only the experiences of so many home educators of councils overstepping their remit or behaving inappropriately or unprofessionally towards home educators, (that issue is to be explored in a separate article): To the observation even by the present Cabinet Secretary for Education that  “Local authorities are not as good as they should be at self-evaluation”

Sledgehammer to crack a nut – cracking the lives of children instead

The Welsh Government admit that there is no cause for concern about at the very least the “vast majority” of families who home educate.

Yet draconian measures and threats against all such families for “noncompliance”.

The damage done

Irreversible.

To children’s education

To children’s wellbeing

To children’s health

To family life.

To trust in the government.