New Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill introduced - what are the implications for academies and maintained schools?

The Bill contains 38 measures which aim to deliver the Labour Party's 2024 commitments to remove barriers to opportunity in schools and improve the education system to make it more consistent and safer for every child. It also seeks to deliver the party's commitments relating to children's social care by strengthening regulation, improving quality of care to ensure it meets children's needs and keeping children rooted in their families and local communities where possible.

The Bill is structured in three parts. The second part includes the provisions related to education in England. The areas of most relevance to schools will include provisions relating to:

• Provision of free breakfast clubs in primary schools in England and the food and drink to be provided in academies
• Limits on number of branded items of school uniforms
• strengthening the system for regulating the teaching profession, including making changes to enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated, regardless of when the misconduct occurred, the setting the teacher is employed in and how the misconduct is uncovered
• The professional status of teaching - ensuring new teachers entering the classroom have, or are working towards QTS  - this measure will also extend statutory induction to newly qualified teachers in academies
• Statutory pay and conditions arrangements will be extended to academy teachers
• All schools and local authorities will be required to co-operate relating to school places and admissions  - the Bill introduces a new power to direct admission of an individual child to all types of school including academies
• Amending the invitation process for establishment of new schools and the process for considering, approving and implementing proposals for the establishment of new schools

Some parts of the Bill are specifically focused on academies, namely those which:

• Place academies under a duty to follow the new National Curriculum
• Provide  academies with equivalent statutory powers to maintained schools to direct pupils off-site to improve their behaviour
• give the Secretary of State power to secure the performance of the proprietor's (academy trust's) duties where the Secretary of State is satisfied they have breached, or likely to breach a legal duty  
• Repeal the duty to make an academy order in relation to a school causing concern

In addition to provisions set out in part 1 relating to children's social care, the Bill will introduce a serious of safety measures to focus on a joined-up system to help protect vulnerable children. These include:

• Introducing unique identifier numbers for children across all services
• Strengthening the role of education in safeguarding
• Supporting families to stay together
• Introducing compulsory Children Not in School registers in every local authority in England, so local authorities can identify all children not in school in their area and ensure they are receiving a suitable education
• Give local authorities the power to intervene where home education is inappropriate and require school attendance

For more information, please contact Victoria Guest in our Regulatory Compliance team on 0117 314 5375, or complete the form below.