Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Summary

Rachel Gordon

February 19, 2026

5 min read

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a notable piece of legislation that seeks to make provisions about the safeguarding and wellbeing of children. The Bill introduces a variety of measures intended to better protect children and raise standards in education. The government has stated that the Bill is a key step towards delivering their Opportunity Mission to break the link between young people’s background and their future success. Those who work with children in any capacity, as well as parents and carers, should have a general understanding of the Bill and its aims. In this article we will outline some of the core points of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and provide an overview of some key takeaways.

What is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill?

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill introduces a variety of measures to help children and families. In so doing, the Bill seeks to ensure that no child falls through gaps between different services and that families can get help when they need it. It also seeks to ensure that children can get a great education at a good school in their area.

The Bill has seven key ambitions:

Making a government that puts children first
Keeping families together and children safe
Supporting children with care experience to thrive
Cracking down on excessive profit-making
Driving high and rising standards for every child
Removing barriers to opportunity in schools
Creating a safer and higher quality education system for every child

It seeks to achieve these ambitions by making provisions about:

Safeguarding and welfare of children
Support for children in care or leaving care
Regulations of care workers
Regulation of establishments and agencies under Part 2 of the Care Standards Act 2000
Employment of children
Breakfast club provision and school uniform
Attendance of children at school
Regulation of independent education institutions
Inspections of schools and colleges
Teacher misconduct
Academies and teachers at Academies
Repealing Section 128 of the Education Act 2002
School places and admissions
Establishing new schools

Key Takeaways

As mentioned, the Bill is an extensive piece of legislation with far reaching aims. These goals will impact teachers, parents and carers alike in order to support the seven key ambitions mentioned above. Below you will find 5 key takeaways from the Bill, however given the wide scope of the Bill it may be beneficial to read it directly in order to have a solid understanding of every aspect of the Bill and how it may impact you specifically. You can read the policy summary notes of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill here.

Key takeaways from the Bill include:

Single unique identifier number

The Bill introduces measures to improve data sharing between agencies and service providers to better safeguard and support children and families. As part of this, an information sharing duty will be introduced that provides a clear legal basis to share information for the purposes of safeguarding and welfare. The duty will also encompass the specification of a consistent identifier, also known as a Single Unique Identifier. This measure seeks to give practitioners more confidence when requesting and providing information in line with data protection legislation, removing barriers to providing targeted and timely support for families. Multi-agency information sharing is vital to protecting children and can play a key role in early identification and prevention. Introducing a consistent identifier seeks to enable quicker and less burdensome interactions between agencies whilst ensuring a greater accuracy of shared information.

Supporting families to stay together

This measure requires local authorities to offer a ‘family group decision-making’ meeting if a local authority is seriously considering applying to the court for a care or supervision order. The measure seeks to give families an opportunity to come together and make a family-led plan in response to concerns about a child’s welfare. Offers of family group decision-making (FGDM) have previously been inconsistent across the country and whilst many local authorities do deliver FGDM at different stages, an independent review of children’s social care in 2022 reported that too often families entered proceedings without an FGDM meeting having taken place. By creating this new legal duty for local authorities the government seeks to offer FGDM meetings to families, bringing consistency to the approach and encouraging a family-first culture. It is important to note that the duty does not apply if a local authority considers that this would not be in the best interest of the child.

Free breakfast clubs in primary schools

These measures will require state schools to ensure that all registered children from reception to year 6 have access to a free breakfast club before the start of school each day. Breakfast clubs will last for at least 30 minutes and include food. The measures build upon evidence that breakfast clubs boost children’s academic attainment and attendance by ensuring that all children, regardless of their circumstance, have a great start to the school day. The free clubs will also support parents with the cost of living and to work the jobs and hours they choose.

Branded school uniform

This measure will introduce a limit of 3 to the number of branded items of school uniform and PE kit that primary schools can require a pupil to have. Secondary schools will be allowed a limit of 4 items as long as the additional compulsory branded item of uniform is a tie. The hope is that this will bring down costs for parents and remove barriers from children accessing sport and other school activities.

Children not in school

These measures will help to ensure that children not in school are receiving a suitable education and are safe. To support this the measures will introduce a compulsory Children Not in School register for each local authority area. These registers will likely mainly include home educated children but may also include children who are flexi-schooled or are in certain forms of alternative provision. Registers will need to include each child’s name, address, date-of-birth, parents’ names and addresses and details of how they are receiving their education. Parents will be required to provide this information. The measures will also bring about changes to the School Attendance Order (SAO) process to make it more efficient. There will also be a requirement whereby the parents of children who are on child protection plans, subject to Section 47 child protection enquiries or attend special schools will need local authority consent to home educate. The measures will also require local authorities to consider the home and other learning environments when determining whether children should be required to attend school.

What Happens Next?

At the time of writing, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has yet to receive Royal Assent and become law. As such, the guidance contained within the Bill is not yet mandatory and the changes within the policy have not yet been implemented. The Bill is currently in its final stages after going through the necessary readings and amendments in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Bill is currently expected to receive Royal Assent by Easter 2026. Once the Bill has received Royal Assent the government will likely publish a timeline for the proposed changes.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill seeks to protect children’s safety and ensure that all children have access to good academic attainment. The Bill introduces a variety of far-reaching measures to uphold the wellbeing of children whilst supporting their future success.