Today’s King’s Speech included government plans for the introduction of a new Children’s Wellbeing Bill that is intended to ‘break down the barriers to opportunity’. This new legislation will aim to raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing and will enable the government to implement policies set out in the Labour Party manifesto earlier this year.

Measures set out in the Bill include strengthening multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements, and a requirement on all schools to provide breakfast clubs. Reforms to ‘improve the education system and make it more consistent and safer for every child’ include a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers, and provide support to home-educating parents; as well as requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and place planning; and ensuring any new teacher entering the classroom has, or is working towards, Qualified Teacher Status (QTS).

The commitment to introduce a register of children not in school, including those home educated, is a proposal with cross-party support. The number of adoptive families who are home educating is growing, with 10% of Adoption Barometer 2024 survey respondents saying they home educated during 2023, an increase of 40% on the previous year. Most are home educating because their children are unable to cope in the current school system.

The commitment to more support for home-educating families is welcome. Adoption UK will be calling for this support to include the extension of pupil premium plus funding for eligible home educated children and more help to access exams and qualifications.

If the register is to help more children attend school, it will need to be set in the context of significant shortfalls in SEND provision, lack of suitable specialist settings, and poor understanding of the implications of early childhood trauma and care experience. Adoption UK will be calling for amendments to teacher training so that education professionals have the skills and knowledge required to meet the needs of care-experienced children and young people.

Also announced today, a new Skills England Bill promises to reform the skills and apprenticeships system and offers a real opportunity for the new government to ensure all post 16 learners who are care-experienced can access appropriate skills and training. Adoption UK research shows that adopted young people are currently more than twice as likely not to be in education, employment or training (NEET) (29%) compared to their peers.

The Employment Rights Bill included in today’s speech will aim to provide additional security and predictability for workers but could offer an opportunity for the new government to review existing laws on parental leave and pay for self-employed adopters. This group are currently unable to claim statutory adoption pay because they are not employees, nor the equivalent of the statutory maternity allowance available to self-employed birth parents. This anomaly in the law negatively impacts the time adoptive parents are able to spend bonding with their child in the vital early months of placement and is an issue Adoption UK will be raising with new government ministers.

Today’s speech included details of more than 35 new Bills the government hopes to pass in the next parliamentary year. As expected, the focus is largely on driving growth in the economy with new laws planned on housebuilding, more jobs and clean energy.