A Well-Meaning Bill That Misses the Mark: Why SEND Families Are Right to Be Worried
Let’s start with what’s good. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill comes from a place we all share: a profound desire to keep children safe, support their mental health, and ensure every child gets a great education. Who could argue with promoting wellbeing, providing free breakfast clubs, or trying to stop children from slipping through the cracks? The intentions, at their heart, are noble.
But as the saying goes, the road to a difficult situation is often paved with good intentions. For parents of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), this bill doesn’t feel like a lifeline; it feels like a threat. It risks punishing families for a system’s failure, and the debate in Parliament this week showed that, thankfully, some MPs are finally starting to hear their cries.
The "Lifeline" Under Threat
For many SEND families, home education isn’t a philosophical choice or a lifestyle preference. It’s a last resort—a necessary lifeline. As MPs like Munira Wilson and others articulated, parents are forced into it after the mainstream system has catastrophically failed their child: through bullying, unmet needs, crippling anxiety, or the sheer absence of an appropriate placement.
The bill, however, views this act of survival through a lens of suspicion. Its mandatory registration and monitoring regime treats these dedicated, often exhausted, caregivers as potential safeguarding risks. It adds bureaucratic burdens—structured reports, requests for consent—to lives already overflowing with therapies, appointments, and advocacy. This threatens the very flexibility that makes home education successful for many disabled children, who rarely thrive on rigid, school-style timetables.
Forced Back into a Failing System?
The most chilling prospect for parents is the power the bill gives to local authorities. Requiring their consent to remove a child from a special school for home education sounds reasonable in theory. But in practice, it’s met with deep, well-founded distrust. These are the same authorities that preside over years-long waits for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), that offer unsuitable school placements, and that are already stretched to breaking point.
The fear is palpable: that this bill will be used to coerce children back into the very environments that harmed them, simply to manage capacity in a broken system. As one MP highlighted, the crisis is so acute that private special schools are making "exorbitant profits" from the state’s failure to provide. The bill does nothing to fix this root cause but instead tightens the grip on the families fleeing it.
Burden Without Support
Perhaps the most galling aspect is the bill’s glaring imbalance. It places new demands, scrutiny, and potential legal jeopardy on home-educating parents. Yet it offers precisely nothing in return—no financial support for curricula or exam fees, no access to therapies, no respite. It’s all stick and no carrot. Given that disabled children are disproportionately represented in the home-education community, this is a direct and heavy blow to some of society’s most vulnerable families.
A Sliver of Hope: Are They Listening?
This is where this week’s debate offers a fragile, but real, glimmer of hope. Reading the Hansard transcript, it was striking to hear MPs from across the benches—Liberal Democrats, Labour, Conservatives—voicing our concerns almost verbatim.
They spoke of home education as a response to systemic failure, not delinquency. They warned against stigmatising loving parents. They raised alarms about overburdened local authorities and the dangers of the proposed "unique identifier" becoming a state surveillance tool. The arguments that we’ve been making in petitions, in the media, and in desperate conversations, are now echoing in Parliament.
This shows the pressure is working. There is a clear, cross-party unease that the bill has got the balance dangerously wrong. It suggests that as the bill continues its passage through Parliament, there may be a genuine chance to amend its most damaging aspects.
The Fight is Not Over
The Minister’s assurances—that home education remains a right, that the register is about safety—felt hollow to those living this reality. Safeguarding is paramount, but it must not become a blanket of surveillance that smothers parental autonomy and punishes adaptive, child-centred care.
The debate proved this argument is alive and winning minds. We must now ensure it wins votes. The task is to channel this emerging parliamentary understanding into concrete amendments that protect the lifeline of home education for SEND families, address the real systemic failures in funding and provision, and ensure that support, not suspicion, is the default.
The bill’s intentions are well-meaning, but its impact on disabled children and their families could be devastating. For the first time, there’s a real sense that enough MPs might just understand that. Our job is to make sure they act on it.
If you want to help, please write to your local MP, voice your concerns, ask them for their support, and help protect SEND parents rights and the rights of the disabled children too.
Telford MP
Shaun Davies
Shaun.Davies.MP@parliament.uk
The Wrekin MP
Mark Pritchard
mark.pritchard.mp@parliament.uk
Other MP?
Find Your MP
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP
Let’s start with what’s good. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill comes from a place we all share: a profound desire to keep children safe, support their mental health, and ensure every child gets a great education. Who could argue with promoting wellbeing, providing free breakfast clubs, or trying to stop children from slipping through the cracks? The intentions, at their heart, are noble.
But as the saying goes, the road to a difficult situation is often paved with good intentions. For parents of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), this bill doesn’t feel like a lifeline; it feels like a threat. It risks punishing families for a system’s failure, and the debate in Parliament this week showed that, thankfully, some MPs are finally starting to hear their cries.
The "Lifeline" Under Threat
For many SEND families, home education isn’t a philosophical choice or a lifestyle preference. It’s a last resort—a necessary lifeline. As MPs like Munira Wilson and others articulated, parents are forced into it after the mainstream system has catastrophically failed their child: through bullying, unmet needs, crippling anxiety, or the sheer absence of an appropriate placement.
The bill, however, views this act of survival through a lens of suspicion. Its mandatory registration and monitoring regime treats these dedicated, often exhausted, caregivers as potential safeguarding risks. It adds bureaucratic burdens—structured reports, requests for consent—to lives already overflowing with therapies, appointments, and advocacy. This threatens the very flexibility that makes home education successful for many disabled children, who rarely thrive on rigid, school-style timetables.
Forced Back into a Failing System?
The most chilling prospect for parents is the power the bill gives to local authorities. Requiring their consent to remove a child from a special school for home education sounds reasonable in theory. But in practice, it’s met with deep, well-founded distrust. These are the same authorities that preside over years-long waits for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), that offer unsuitable school placements, and that are already stretched to breaking point.
The fear is palpable: that this bill will be used to coerce children back into the very environments that harmed them, simply to manage capacity in a broken system. As one MP highlighted, the crisis is so acute that private special schools are making "exorbitant profits" from the state’s failure to provide. The bill does nothing to fix this root cause but instead tightens the grip on the families fleeing it.
Burden Without Support
Perhaps the most galling aspect is the bill’s glaring imbalance. It places new demands, scrutiny, and potential legal jeopardy on home-educating parents. Yet it offers precisely nothing in return—no financial support for curricula or exam fees, no access to therapies, no respite. It’s all stick and no carrot. Given that disabled children are disproportionately represented in the home-education community, this is a direct and heavy blow to some of society’s most vulnerable families.
A Sliver of Hope: Are They Listening?
This is where this week’s debate offers a fragile, but real, glimmer of hope. Reading the Hansard transcript, it was striking to hear MPs from across the benches—Liberal Democrats, Labour, Conservatives—voicing our concerns almost verbatim.
They spoke of home education as a response to systemic failure, not delinquency. They warned against stigmatising loving parents. They raised alarms about overburdened local authorities and the dangers of the proposed "unique identifier" becoming a state surveillance tool. The arguments that we’ve been making in petitions, in the media, and in desperate conversations, are now echoing in Parliament.
This shows the pressure is working. There is a clear, cross-party unease that the bill has got the balance dangerously wrong. It suggests that as the bill continues its passage through Parliament, there may be a genuine chance to amend its most damaging aspects.
The Fight is Not Over
The Minister’s assurances—that home education remains a right, that the register is about safety—felt hollow to those living this reality. Safeguarding is paramount, but it must not become a blanket of surveillance that smothers parental autonomy and punishes adaptive, child-centred care.
The debate proved this argument is alive and winning minds. We must now ensure it wins votes. The task is to channel this emerging parliamentary understanding into concrete amendments that protect the lifeline of home education for SEND families, address the real systemic failures in funding and provision, and ensure that support, not suspicion, is the default.
The bill’s intentions are well-meaning, but its impact on disabled children and their families could be devastating. For the first time, there’s a real sense that enough MPs might just understand that. Our job is to make sure they act on it.
If you want to help, please write to your local MP, voice your concerns, ask them for their support, and help protect SEND parents rights and the rights of the disabled children too.
Telford MP
Shaun Davies
Shaun.Davies.MP@parliament.uk
The Wrekin MP
Mark Pritchard
mark.pritchard.mp@parliament.uk
Other MP?
Find Your MP
https://members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP
Fact Check Me
Hansard Transcript Westminster Hall Debate 1st December 2025
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-12-01/debates/D42A2D07-ADCB-489E-929B-6223A574DD44/Children%E2%80%99SWellbeingAndSchoolsBill
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