The Welsh Government are pursuing Senedd permission to apply key clauses of Westminster’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools (CWS) Bill to Wales, even though this would mean the Senedd asking Westminster to legislate for Wales on devolved issues.
The Welsh Government has produced a standardised generic copy and paste response to enquiries, that attempts to justify their decision to continue to press for a vote on this Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) on 3rd March 2026.
This evaluation of that Welsh Government response aims to address each point of that defence, including aspects that appear to be misleading or contradictory.
According to Welsh Government’s own information, LCMs are meant to provide the rationale and impact of a Bill before consent can be given.
Are there indications in this generic response of the rationale?
Or of consideration of the impacts on the lives of the children they are legislating about?
Or evaluation of the financial, regulatory and social consequences for Wales?
These would be required to align with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.
CLAIMS OF WELSH LABOUR’S GENERIC RESPONSE:
Reason the Welsh Government claim for the CWS Bill – the Prime Minister gives a very different reason
The generic s response claims they are only pushing for the CWS powers for “safeguarding” reasons.
Whilst Welsh Labour’s present response claims the reason for this Westminster Bill’s CNIS section is “safeguarding”, the Prime Minister Kier Starmer has publicly stated very different ones, only this week.
The Prime Minister justifies “tougher regulations on homeschooling (sic)” and “setting a higher bar for opting out” (i.e. obstructing parental capacity to deregister children from school), because of what he considers to be “the role of schools in integration”.
This suggests the view of school as a tool of social engineering.
The Prime Minister’s references depict the reasons for the CWS Bill as a way of curtailing influences of the family, of increasing control over the behaviour and beliefs of the next generation, to place state as the determiners of values.
So Westminster’s reasons for the CWS Bill would appear to be rather “adversarial”, and relating to state interference and influence in family life, given the Prime Minister’s comments about home education, and not really about safeguarding children, as the Senedd has been led to believe.
Surely the people of Wales deserve better than this?
Surely the Senedd should be advocating for families in Wales, be led by the people of Wales and not the other way around?
Who is the Bill meant to affect – and who will it actually affect?
The generic Welsh Government response says:
“Majority of parents who choose to home educate their children of course have their best interests at heart. This LCM is not about those parents”,
referring to only a “tiny minority” who are considered to potentially be ill-treating their children.
The statement that the LCM is not about the vast majority of parents is not correct.
The LCM *is* about all EHE families.
It would be extremely misleading to the Senedd to imply that the majority of EHE families would not be impacted, that the measures are only for a “tiny minority”.
The Bill does not focus resources and measures on a “tiny minority” but has unprecedented measure and powers against ALL EHE families
The Bill puts a duty on LAs to monitor, oversee and construct extensive databases (termed “registers”) to surveil the lives of ALL EHE children and families.
- All parents threatened with fines if don’t provide information within a tight time frame or accidentally provide mistaken information.
- All parents threatened with a criminal record, fines and even imprisonment if they are forced to defend their children’s right to a suitable education.
- All parents risk facing being in such a situation given the absence of independent appeals/complaints/advocacy/mediation/tribunal services or mechanisms,
- All parents face the challenges and stigmatisation of the presumption that parents are presumed to not be providing suitable education or caring for their children unless there is evidence otherwise versus the presumption that councils will always act in a child’s “best interests” (despite so much evidence of times this does not and has not happened).
- All parents could find themselves in the “certain circumstances” categories, not only a “tiny minority” (see below).
All children, parents and families would be impacted by a government (but we trust not the Senedd) perpetuating the negative stereotype that home educators cannot be trusted with their own children and therefore need to be “on a register”.
The negative stereotype that says families should be under surveillance, monitored, feel forced into practice they may not agree with or feel is in their child’s “best interests”, threatened with fines and even imprisonment if they continue to advocate for their children’s needs.
If the “vast majority” of parents are fine, trustworthy and provide good education and care, why waste precious time, money and resources trying to monitor and repeatedly visit them?
Especially when there is good evidence that surveillance doesn’t protect, that when used indiscriminately or inappropriately it does more harm than good.
Technique of citing cases relating to child protection issues.
Is it appropriate and relevant or not to cite these three cases?
Does evaluation of these three cases prove a need for the measures of the CWS Bill?
The Welsh Government name three heart-breaking cases of children who have been affected by abuse or neglect as justification for the measures in this Bill.
It feels very wrong to be forced to publicly dig over areas of these children’s lives, just to protect their names from being used for political purposes,
to prevent their lives being weaponised to impact the rights and wellbeing of other children.
So, suffice it to say –
The fundamental problem in each of these cases was failure by multiple agencies on multiple occasions to use existing powers.
Each child was known to statutory services including social services because of concerns raised.
One case was not even home educated but still on the school roll and shielding by directive of the government’s own lockdown measures that were intended as a safeguarding measure, making measures in the CWS Bill about deregistered children not relevant.
Please read an analysis of the use of references to these cases here:
The problems were not lack of powers, but failure to use existing powers,
Partly it would seem because of large caseloads.
Just adding terms such as “safeguarding” and child safety onto a policy or using emotive comments does not mean that the measures that one attaches those terms to would be effective.
Spreading resources more thinly by monitoring and surveillance of normal families would make it even more difficult to help any children who genuinely need input from statutory services.
You don’t make it easier to find a needle in a haystack by making the haystack bigger.
Or by spreading what resources have even more thinly.
Any abusers are not going to worry about the relatively small criminal offence of not complying with a register, when they are already breaking the law by the abuse, committing offences that carry the rightful threat of far greater repercussions and custodial sentences.
Any neglectful parents would not be concerned about focusing on compliance with clerical duties such as registering their child.
So, it’s loving, conscientious families that end up being coerced to comply with these “registers” and their extensive demands.
So, the registers would not “find” children of concern.
They would however cause problems of great concern and damage for so many loving families.
More information is available here:
What “powers to compel” would result from the Bill?
Would these be effective or counterproductive?
Which of these powers are mentioned in the Labour generic response,
and which are not?
The copy and paste response from Welsh Government lists several claims and descriptions of the powers that the Bill would give them.
To evaluate and critique each of these desired powers in turn:
Mandatory duty to “register” and regularly provide information to the LA who then construct and hold extensive databases.
More information on the concept of mandatory registration can be found here.
Key points are summarised below;
Based on presumption that parents cannot be trusted.
Please note – this isn’t just a “register” – these are extensive and complex databases with large volumes of personal information that track a child through their life.
Anyone already committing serious criminal offences such as child abuse that carry heavy custodial sentences would either not be deterred by threats of fines for noncompliance or making mistakes about a register.
or be, as abusers can be, skilfully manipulative enough to keep up the necessary façade.
Either way, “registers” would be remarkably ineffective in such cases.
Nor would any neglectful parents be likely to be concerned about clerical duties like telling the LA their child should be on a register.
Whereas the vast “vast majority” if not all of home educators where there are no causes for concern would be profoundly impacted.
Whereas various measures in the Bill would make it more difficult for loving but struggling families to seek early help and intervention.
Whereas measures in the Bill such as mandatory registration carry the “very real unintended consequences” of pushing any abused children further away from chance of help and seeing statutory services. The measures in the Bill therefore would risk not only impacting their healthcare, but also obstructing the opportunity for such services to detect and act on any signs of abuse.
Shift towards a co-parenting role for LAs,
With the “co-parent” being directed to use tactics of threats such as legal action for compliance.
The proposal for mandatory registers goes against the lessons learnt by failed attempts such as “CounterPoint”,
which was abandoned because such databases found to be more dangerous than protective.
Duplicates data already have, eg Lost Children’s Database and deregistration data.
Lacks clarification and safeguarding measures on the use and storage of data.
Ignores the “voice of the child” – child has no say in any of this – whether or not to be “registered”, what is put on databases, how used, how would follow them through life.
Has no mechanism for when a child or young person refuses consent for their data to be used but the parents would be penalised and fined if they do not comply with the demands.
Has no informed consent process, contrary to the DfE’s own declarations of what is important when dealing with data of families.
Has no rights or mechanisms for anyone who’s information is stored on these databases to have corrections made of errors or misinformation. That includes children, young people, parents, other family members, any education provider placed onto it.
Indeed, no rights or mechanism have been provided for any person whose data is on it to even see what is stored on it, and that includes the children and young people in question. No rights or mechanism for independent complaints or evaluation.
When it is known that councils can and do make mistakes and errors of judgement. Disregarding the potential of conscious and unconscious bias in how staff handle these databases and evaluations.
When it known that staff can and do overstep lawful remits even with present powers.
Note the observation of the present Cabinet Secretary for Education that “Local authorities are not as good as they should be at self-evaluation”
Data of ALL parents to be stored – very dangerous in cases of domestic abuse.
Sledgehammer to crack a nut. Damaging all affected.
Please do read more about the damaging effect of mandatory registers here and here
Consent to deregister in “certain circumstances
Please do read the further information that can be found here:
Key points of concern:
Placing LAs as determiners of what is in a child’s “best interests”, effectively prevents deregistration.
Partly due to institutionalised bias of considering schools to be the best place for children,
Partly due to the unhealthy and divisive influence of the tone of the Bill, of not trusting families and treating with suspicion,
Partly due to the fact that LAs, as the providers of the school system in their area, are not exactly impartial in being asked to consider their own provision not in a child’s “best interests”.
Effectively obstructing or preventing deregistration:
Even if any past investigations by social services have demonstrated no cause for concern, as, we gather, happens in over 80% of investigations under s47.
Even if such investigation concludes that the reporting was malicious.
Even when children in need plans are often in place for reasons that have nothing to do with concerns about parents in terms of safeguarding.
Children can be on a CIN plan because of disabilities or medical needs.
Children – and parents with disabilities would therefore be directly targeted and impacted by this clause, purely for being disabled, which is discriminatory.
Children can be on a CIN plan because of problems within the school environment, be they risks to their safety and wellbeing resulting from the school environment or from lack of suitable provision for them there.
It is legislation that causes deterrents to seeking early help rather than encouragement to.
Because parents would be reluctant to agree to a CIN plan knowing that if they do their rights to protect their children by deregistration if required would be removed.
Fundamental principles of social care input into families include empowerment of the family and keeping them together as far as possible. The effective prevention of home education for these children runs counter to those core principles.
The Bill plays into hands of coercive controllers and abusive ex-partners who would now not only be able to cause immeasurable stress by malicious reports to social services, but also have the resident parent’s rights and duties to advocate for their child removed alongside removing the child’s right to the education of choice, to the education that best suits them, to have the child’s life and that of the rest of the family greatly disrupted by precipitation of issuing of School Attendance Orders.
Presumption that even if it were ethically and morally acceptable for LAs to be the determiners of what is in a child’s best interests, that they would never make mistakes, errors of judgement or act with bias or prejudice.
This is reflected in the lack of independent advocacy/complaints/appeals/mediation/tribunal mechanisms
The Welsh Government has previously acknowledged something of a need for an independent complaints or mediation system for EHE families, which the former Children’s Commissioner for Wales documented and commended. However, years later there is still no consideration or discernible plans for any such mechanism and the CWS Bill which the Welsh Government seek to appropriate instead of devising a Wales specific approach makes no provision for such systems or services.
Please read more on the issues of consent being required for “certain children” to be deregistered from school here.
Effectively mandatory regular meetings in the family home with council staff
Visits would be effectively mandatory because if exercise lawful right to decline them (the government revealing calls exercising a lawful right to decline as “refusing” them) then the council are placed under a legal duty to consider taking legal action.
Even if they were acceptable morally, ethically and legally,
Such enforced meetings without true informed consent and by staff not equipped to deal with the area of non-consensual child-protection meetings are a dreadfully poor and ineffective screening tool.
They would have very low sensitivity and specificity, and extremely poor predictive values, meaning they’d be likely to appear to find things that aren’t really there and miss things that are, especially when have such a large sample size by intending to put ALL families under surveillance and would be looking for a “tiny minority”, if any.
Having a voice means having the right to say “No”,
The measures in the Bill override the voice of the child.
whether that’s at this stage of consideration of legislation or when it comes to a stranger wanting to interview them in their own home when there is no reason to believe they are at risk.
Please read here for more information and evaluation.
As well as this briefing note:
Pilots of Mandatory meetings to deregister a child from school
It is claimed by the generic Welsh Government’s defence that those are to offer support and information,
But information such as this can readily be sent out and made available on the council website, plus parents can ask for that if wanted
The generic response claims an aim of being sure parents know what they are undertaking.
Again, that information can be sent out or made available.
But the Bill states that those pilots would require the child to be present at a meeting before they can be deregistered,
A child doesn’t need to be present, unless they wish to be, at meetings if those reasons were the purpose,
So those cannot be the only or underlying purposes for such meetings before deregistration can occur.
Deregistration would delayed until the LA arrange such a meeting,
with no time frame given for when these meetings would be required to take place,
no duty for LAs to complete such a meeting within a short time frame
(whereas deregistered parents would face fines for failing to provide information within 15 days).
No information is available to clarify if parents of a child who is unable to attend school, who have stated their intention to deregister the child, would still be liable for fines or prosecution for non-attendance while waiting an indeterminate amount of time for the LA to arrange a meeting.
No information is available to clarify whether parents would be still liable for fines or prosecution if the child were physically or psychologically unable or unwilling to attend such a meeting.
The requirement for future plans to be provided by parents at such meetings (therefore conveying an expectation that the education will be adult-led ) is discriminatory against child-led and child-focused approaches.
This requirement also opens parents up for accusations of education not being “efficient”,
if parents or children rightly amend any plans when exploring a range of learning styles, approaches and resources to determine what is most suitable for a child.
So, a parental requirement to provide future plans on deregistration places them in an unresolvable position.
Adhere to plans even if becomes evident not suitable, thus education not truly suitable from the child’s perspective
Or
Diverge from plans to education that is suitable but then could be deemed not to be efficient, and therefore considered not suitable by the LA. Please read more on this here:
The aims and outcome measures of the pilot are very unclear –
Are these from the LA perspective, and to reduce the numbers of children who are deregistered?
Or is the outcome measure to be satisfaction of the family with the process? With how it may have benefitted them in the start of their home educating journey?
Would the subsequent views of parents and children be sensitively and objectively explored once they have had a period of time as home educators, to see how that compared to the advice and information given during that deregistration meeting?
Or immediately afterwards during a period of relief of the meeting having concluded, but before having an opportunity to compare whatever information given to their own experience or the experiences of others?
Mandatory reporting by education providers –
Impositions that would deter families from using those who provide educationally and socially enriching opportunities outside of the family
Impositions that would deter such providers from providing services and opportunities to home educating families.
Impositions that would make it more expensive for families to access such services, limiting opportunities further.
So, for a Bill that is allegedly about safeguarding and wanting children to be seen by and influenced by people outside of the family,
To then make it more difficult and expensive to do so,
that’s a spectacularly remarkable own goal,
But it’s not a game. This is the wellbeing of children that’s being “played” with.
The real reason for the section on obstructing use of using educational providers outside the home is to clamp down on “illegal schools”.
But there are already laws and measure to do that- these just need to be used appropriately.
If the government fear repercussions from sections of society for dealing with illegal schools, that should not be a reason for obstructing the education of those who benefit from external providers to enhance their home education experience.
And there is no evidence that illegal schools are a particular issue in Wales even if these measures were justified- which they are not.
Indeed, this is also likely to be another area that demonstrates that the authors of the bill have a very poor grasp of home education, quite possibly conflating traditional academics with education. what do they mean by “education provider”?
Home educators generally have a far broader understanding of what constitutes true education, of what contributes to deeper learning and optimal child development.
Please read more on the impositions of obstructions to education providers.
Why piggyback onto what was designed by Westminster as an England- only Bill?
Why not make our own approaches, policies and legislation if required?
The generic defence letter from the Welsh Government claims the motivation for “piggybacking” onto the CWS Bill rather than developing a Wales specific approach is to “ensure the same safeguards as for those in England”
But what is needed is good standards not necessarily the same methods.
And so many are warning of the counterproductive and dangerous nature of the Bill,
In Wales we have our own ALN Act, our own Curriculum for Wales, our own approach to social care, our own approach to physical chastisement,
So the claim that “piggybacking” onto this Westminster Bill is necessary to have the same safeguards as England would be to negate the role and benefits of such Wales specific approaches.
School Attendance Orders – SAOs
Councils already have the power to issue SAOs if there is good reason to believe a child is not receiving a suitable education, and no one would disagree with that, provided powers are used appropriately and within lawful remits.
However unfortunately there is good evidence, both quantitative and qualitative in first-hand accounts that this is not necessarily the case.
Objective research by the charity Educational Freedom has demonstrated marked discrepancies between LAs around the country in their use of their existing powers.
Figures suggest some local authorities likely to be misusing and abusing their powers in instigating legal action against home educating families.
Wales, despite only having 22 of the 500 LAs in the UK, has two LAs in the “top ten” of most concerning LAs in the UK, and concerning national average figures.
Please read more on this research here:
Thus, how can one give markedly increased powers to LAs with no mechanism of accountability for how these are used, no appeals or complaints service, no advocacy or mediation services, and when there is evidence of misuse of existing powers in a number of areas.
Under the present system, School Attendance Orders should only be issued if the child is considered not to be receiving a suitable education AND if school education would be thought to be more likely to provide an education that suited them.
However, under the CWS Bill, not receiving a suitable education is not the only reason for issuing a SAO.
There are a whole range of other reasons for issuing SAOs, including for having “certain children”, even if those “certain children” have a wonderfully enriching home education experience.
Under the Bill, parents can be threatened with legal action even when the child is receiving an amazing education, for not jumping through punitive clerical hoops.
Not only could SAOs be issued even when a child is receiving an excellent education at home, but also without the requirement for the education in school to be better, or even equal.
Given the recent Estyn annual report, which cited “significant weaknesses in the development of some of the basics of education, such as reading, mathematics”, “expectations low”, “gaps in teachers’ own literacy knowledge” and a “failure of schools to effectively evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses”, the use of SAOs as given in the Bill can hardly be appropriate and would obstruct children’s rights to a suitable education when used in such a way.
Mistaken belief that there’s been adequate scrutiny.
The generic response states that the Senedd member sending it is allegedly “Reassured adequate scrutiny of Bill in Westminster where peers and MPs for Wales sit”.
But the Bill went through the House of Commons as an England-only bill, with concerned Welsh citizens told by their MPs when trying to highlight the problems with the Bill at that point that it did not affect them or Wales.
There are considerable concerns about the lack of adequate scrutiny and process at Westminster. You can find some here:
There has been no public scrutiny of how this Bill would impact Wales
even the Children’s Commissioner for Wales has commented on the lack of Children’s rights Impact Assessment
Just some admissions of the lack of scrutiny at Westminster and the Senedd so far include:
The LJCC pointed out that “the provisions were introduced at the final Stage of House of Commons consideration, so there’s been no opportunity for MPs to really seriously scrutinise these provisions. It’s very much a Report Stage, it’s not a scrutiny stage”. The LJCC added that “obviously, nobody in the Senedd has had the opportunity to scrutinise them either”, commenting that the Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Education hadn’t “been scrutinised to justify that”.
Even the Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Education had to admit that she “recognise(d) that the way that this has been done does impact on the scrutiny to date”, that she “recognise(d) that, from a committee scrutiny point of view, it’s not an optimum situation”.
Regarding the lack of scrutiny via subsequent secondary legislation.
the Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Education admitted that there had not been appropriate opportunities for scrutiny for the application of this legislation to Wales. When trying to use the defence that there could scrutiny during secondary legislation processes., she was swiftly reminded by a fellow Labour MS and member of the LJCC that their previous mutual experience had been to find secondary legislation inadequate for proper scrutiny of legislation. Another member of the LJCC also raised the issue of secondary legislation being a very poor way to afford appropriate and sufficient scrutiny when addressing the lack of evaluation even by that stage of the financial implications for Wales .
Please do read this article on the lack of scrutiny from a Senedd perspective.
Use of emotive comments and lack of consideration of any other motivations, agendas, impacts or outcomes.
The generic Welsh government response concludes with the claims that the Bill is about keeping children safe – the most vulnerable children
“Safeguarding” and “keeping children safe” are not magic words where whatever they are attached to will automatically do that. Measures have to be scrutinized to see if they will do actually “keep children safe” or if they will do the opposite, to ensure they do not do more harm than good.
There is a growing body of voices warning of just that, but these are being ignored and overridden.
Gaslighting and stonewalling cannot be appropriate approaches to scrutiny.
Scrutiny involves listening and hearing others, engaging with others especially those with lived experience of home education, of children being trapped in unsuitable and unsafe school environments where they are not being provided with or able to access a suitable education.
To quote Reclaim Rights for Children regarding the measures of the CNIS clauses of the CWS Bill:
“In place of universal services, choice and consent there is surveillance, data sharing, targeted measures and punishment.
“Intrusive measures are justified as ‘safeguarding’ even when these responses harm not help children, their families and communities.”
So it is vital for Members of the Senedd to understand how this Bill would endanger vulnerable children, including by taking scarce time, resources and focus away from them to be able to surveil normal healthy loving families.
WHAT IS OMITTED FROM WELSH GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE:
Where are the impact assessments?
LCMS, legislative consent motions, are the kind of legal motion being put to the Sened by the Welsh government in the hope they will approve the CWS Bill to apply to Wales.
These LCMs require full impact assessments that include involvement and appreciation of the community that would be impacted, and opportunity for the Senedd to then scrutinise and evaluate these.
Three weeks until the vote at the Senedd, over a week since the date the vote was originally meant to have taken place,
and there are not impact assessments available.
Bearing in mind the complexity of the legislation, and wide-ranging measures, that’s quite a tight time schedule to prepare any of due merit and worth.
Bear in mind that the English version has been said to be “not fit for purpose”, and that it wasn’t published until after the Report Stage in the House of Commons.
The Children’s Commissioner for Wales has recently reminded the Welsh Government of the importance of producing a Children’s Rights Impact Assessment on the CWS Bill in Wales.
The present Cabinet Secretary for Education, only two days after the vote was originally intended to take place, stated to the Children, Young People and Education Committee, on a separate issue that:
“For me, that’s why things like children’s rights impact assessments are so important, because of all the groups in society, children don’t have that vote and we have to make sure that their voices are heard. Things like children’s rights impact assessments are ways of making sure that their needs get to the top of the list”. Yet for the CWS Bill, a Bill with such profound impacts on the lives of children in Wales if the Senedd were to vote to give assent,
there is no impact assessment, let alone sufficient time to scrutinise if it is an effective, reflective and appropriate one.
Disabled children particularly impacted
Generally –
the measures that impact all EHE children will particularly impact disabled children, because children with ALNs or disabilities are more likely to need and benefit from the flexibility, nurturing environment and alternative pedagogy that home education affords.
Specifically impacted in a way that as been considered likely to be discriminatory by KC opinion,
For example,
Consent to deregister “certain children” will include a wide cohort of children with disabilities or additional needs.
Consent to deregister will impair families abilities to try special educational provision, knowing that if it turns out to be not acceptable or appropriate for their child, they are effectively trapped in it.
Consent to deregister “certain children” will be a deterrent to seeking IDPS,
for example, if a SAO were to be issued and the child has an IDP with a school named on it, the family, under this Bill do not even have the right to ASK for the SAO to be revoked if they can see that either school attendance or the school named would be inappropriate and unsuitable.
Consent to deregister will obstruct families of disabled children and those with ALNs who are struggling from seeking early help, as even accepting a voluntary CIN plan would remove parental rights and duties to be able to move their children to a more appropriate or safer place mode of education.
The approach to disabled children has been deemed likely unlawful by Steve Broach KC. Please read more about the discriminatory impacts of this Bill on disabled children and those with ALNs here and here
Refusal to place any duty of accountability or evaluation of feedback on LAs – unlike England
There is only CNIS amendment that the Welsh Government do not want applied to Wales – a requirement to give home educators the opportunity to provide constructive feedback on the LA policy, practice and tone of engagement via forums.
The Welsh Government have requested for all the measure of control and surveillance over families to apply in Wales,
but have refused to place a duty on LAs for any form of accountability or reflective evaluation of their approaches from the perspectives of others,
including even this simple form of accountability, constructive feedback and engagement with families on a more equal setting, separately to the forms of LA enforced engagement of assessment of parents under threat of fines and SAOs. This is rather telling when the Cabinet Secretary for Education also told that meeting of the CYPEC that “local authorities are not as good as they should be at self-evaluation”,
The presumption that council staff will always act in best interests
and lack of independent and impartial mechanisms to deal with the consequences and impacts when this is not the case.
The contradictory and counterproductive mandatory measure of placing active deterrents to education providers
for EHE children and young people, be these commercial or voluntary and community based.
This illogical measure is counterproductive to the aims of the Bill for children to be “seen” by, engaged with and according to Kier Starmer also influenced by people outside of the family.
The Bill mandates active deterrents such as mandatory reporting to council staff, threats of fines and other measures (such as use of Osted/inspectors) for any mistakes or delays in providing information. deter educational providers from providing educational services to EHE children by placing such heavy duties of reporting under threat of fines for mistakes? – for normal healthy families.
These clauses are said to be aimed at dealing with illegal schools, including without appearing to be targeting faith groups, when there are already powers to deal with illegal schools if used appropriately, and where these are not a significant issue in Wales.
So, we have England-specific legislation which would have the opposite effect of the stated aims in decreasing access to education and placing deterrents for adults outside the family to engaging meaningfully with EHE children,
Desire to take these measures against EHE families even further revealed
Revealed in the highly questionable WG-commissioned “evaluation” of their EHE guidance of as well as apparent intention to use an evaluation of such questionable validity to justify seeking the powers and measures outlined in this Bill.
Aleaked and then removed statement on the WG website stated the publication was timed to “inform” the debate at Plenary.
Please read more about that “evaluation” that the Welsh Government commissioned, including the somewhat indignant tone taken toward home educators who followed lawful remits.
Asked to vote when we don’t yet know quite what voting for
Which leads to a fundamental reason for not voting for this bill, in that we don’t really know yet quite what voting for.
The devil is in the detail and that won’t be revealed until the questionable use of secondary legislation well after the vote to sanction this LCM.
Hints are available, for example in the desires indicated in that flawed and highly questionable WG commissioned evaluation to take measures beyond those depicted here.
Taking these measures even further would produce even more of a contradiction to the statements of this copy and paste response even further.
Hints of the desired direction are also seen in how various Welsh LAs are already seeking to overstep their lawful remits even further, including open attempts to reduce the numbers of home educated children and young people.
Information on the direction that WG appear to be keen to take these measures is significant because how they would seek to implement this Bill is not given in this copy and paste response.
In addition, the Bill itself is essentially only a skeleton description of powers given with very little information or detail on implementation, direction of approach and how these would actually “play out on the ground”.
The Senedd is being asked to vote on measures without knowing this information, as this would be given in subsequent secondary legislation, only available after voting on the proposals.
The pending legal challenges and KC opinions
There are 4 different KC opinions, from a range of perspectives, all citing areas of likely unlawfulness and grounds for judicial review.
The British Rabbinical Union have this week announced their intention to launch a judicial review once Royal Assent is obtained.
Please read more about the KC opinions and legal considerations here:
Why such a rush?
It would appear from Welsh Government’s own statements that they are trying to press through legislation quickly because of the forthcoming election.
However the Cabinet Secretary for Education also had to admit that using secondary legislation isn’t actually quicker, and is ineffective at offering adequate scrutiny.
Surely the children of Wales deserve better than this?
What are the problems with the use of LCMs and secondary legislation?
The use of secondary legislation has been criticised widely including at LJCC, not only because of the controversial heavy reliance on Henry VIII powers, but also because of acknowledgement, even by the present Cabinet Secretary for Education that, not only did she admit that “there had not been appropriate opportunities for scrutiny for the application of this legislation to Wales”, but that “previous mutual experience had been to find secondary legislation inadequate for proper scrutiny of legislation”
How the Bill operates by creating a climate of fear, suspicion, intimidation and threats rather than respect and engagement.
Please see this article about the lack of engagement of WG with those with concerns or lived experience.
This propagation of a climate that is derogatory towards loving home educating families is also reflected in the tone and content of the WG-commissioned “evaluation”.
No mention of costing
of the funding to “spreading a net” so thinly as to put normal families under surveillance.
Even if such a “net” were justified, there is no evaluation if the considerable resources that would be needed to fund such monitoring could be better spent in other measures.
No mention that English risk assessment considered there would be no increased funding, that these measures would be expected to be undertaken using existing funding and resources.
Conclusion
So, the generic Welsh Government response would appear to be somewhat misleading both in the information it contains, and in what is omitted.
This Bill is counterproductive, expensive, detrimental to the wellbeing and education of children in Wales, and places the focus of need and attention in the wrong place.
We trust that Members of the Senedd will join us in evaluating the articles here.
We would be very happy to address any questions not only our email address but we would be delighted to have the opportunity to discuss these issues in person.
We trust that the Senedd will act as true representatives of the people in Wales and be able to perform its role in scrutiny, even if it is only to say that it cannot give sufficient scrutiny to this Bill at this stage in this much time.
We trust that the Senedd will vote against the LCM on the CWS Bill on the 3rd of March, and instead of “piggybacking” onto a dysfunctional Bill from Westminster that was designed for England, rather re-evaluate the situation, engage with the communities with lived experience, and take a Wales-specific approach that is respectful and promotes diversity a wonderful educational experiences for all children.
Wellbeing in Education Wales 