Lynne Neagle, Cabinet Secretary for Education
Since becoming Cabinet Secretary for Education in March 2024, the wellbeing and safeguarding of children has been a top priority for me. I have taken every opportunity to keep children and young people safe and ensure they feel supported and engaged in their learning.
Families have the right to educate their children at home. However, where parents choose to exercise this right there is a balance to be struck between that right and the child’s right to a suitable education. As Cabinet Secretary for Education, I want to ensure all children can access and exercise their right to an education, and I have taken forward a range of measures relating to elective home education (EHE) and children missing education (CME) to ensure this is the case.
A child who is in receipt of a suitable education at home is not missing education. However, local authorities need to be confident that they know of all the children living in their area, and that they are sure all of those children are in receipt of a suitable education. To support this we took forward a pilot with seven local authorities in 2025, to test an information sharing arrangement between health and education services, intended to help local authorities identify children who are missing education.
We passed the Children Act 2004 (Children Missing Education Database) (Pilot) (Wales) Regulations 2025 and the Education (Information about Children in Independent Schools) (Pilot) (Wales) Regulations 2025 in April 2025. They required the sharing of information with local authorities to enable them to better identify CME.
The pilot for the CME database has recently been evaluated, and the evaluation report and recommendations will inform the work for the Welsh Government and local authorities to take to strengthen systems and processes, so that there is a more effective and reliable way of identifying children who may be missing education. I have agreed that the Welsh Government will work with local authorities and address the recommendations as part of a new ‘CME action plan’. This approach builds on the existing stakeholder engagement arrangements we have in place.
A separate aspect of the policy work in relation to EHE and CME is the ongoing implementation of the statutory EHE guidance.
The guidance was published in 2023 and in May 2025 I agreed plans to commission an independent evaluation of its impact. The evaluation report was published in January 2026. As with the CME database pilot evaluation, the report includes recommendations that will strengthen local authorities’ existing arrangements.
The evaluation report supports local authorities’ views that the current guidance and legislation are not sufficient to enable them to identify all children they have responsibility for. This view is supported by the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, and the National Independent Safeguarding Board.
Work to address these longstanding concerns has been undertaken in collaboration with the Department for Education via new provisions in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The stakeholder engagement and consultations we have already undertaken in relation to these policies have informed our position and evidence base for the measures in the Bill.
On 17 March 2026 the Senedd agreed the motion to provide consent for certain provisions to apply to Wales, including the ‘children not in school’ clauses. Under these clauses, local authorities will be required to establish ‘children not in school’ registers, with separate requirements on parents and carers of children who are receiving education at home or alternative provision, to register with the local authority. The new requirements will provide greater oversight of children not in school and reduce the risk of vulnerable children slipping through the net. Under the Bill there are delegated powers for the Welsh Government to determine how the provisions will work in Wales, via new secondary legislation and statutory guidance. Royal Assent of the Bill is expected in May. It is my expectation that the next Welsh Government will engage closely with local authorities and undertake a full public consultation on the provisions for Wales as early as possible in the new Senedd term.
As part of the development work for the legislation, consideration also needs to be given to how funding is allocated and how to support local authorities in effectively discharging any new responsibilities.
As this Senedd term draws to a close, any decisions on future priorities and the governance of this work will be for the next Welsh Government. However, the children not in school clauses of the Bill provide a strong foundation on which to build on the policy work already undertaken on elective home education and children missing education. The foundations are now firmly in place for the next Welsh Government to progress this work, ensuring that all children in Wales are supported to receive a suitable education and that their wellbeing remains at the heart of our approach.