Where’s the Wellbeing in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill?

Ros McLellan and Catherine Fraser-Andrews

March 2025

Introduction

Given the well-documented concern about the poor state of children and young people’s wellbeing in England (Chollet et al., 2024), including reports of some of the lowest levels of child wellbeing across the world (UNICEF Innocenti, 2020), it is a welcome development to see The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill currently making its way through Parliament. But as this piece will demonstrate, this may not be the panacea we have long awaited.

High Expectations

This bill was highly anticipated by professionals and the public alike, with the BACP expressing their delight with Labour’s vision, and with its commitment to increasing access to mental health support in schools as well as in the community (BACP, 2024). In its original 2021 iteration ‘Labour’s Children’s Recovery Plan’ the commitment went further still, with Labour announcing its intention to put a counsellor in every school: ‘Quality mental health support in every school: give every child the support they need to transition back to school and manage personal challenges, with access to qualified in-school counselling staff alongside boosting wellbeing through extra activities’ (The Labour Party, 2021, p.5). The document addressed systemic issues such as providing support for teachers and recognizing that child food poverty is not just a term-time issue. Following on from a decade which started with strict austerity measures and ended with a global pandemic, there was a lot resting on the fruition of Labour’s vision.

What is the Bill?

In a recent press release the Department for Education and The Rt Hon Bridget Phillipson MP shared that the goal of their Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is ‘to protect thousands of vulnerable children hidden from sight’ (Department for Education & Phillipson, 2025). It is inarguable that in the face of increasing rates of children out of schools due to both formal and informal exclusionary arrangements, and emotionally based school non-attendance, this goal is critical, and its ambition laudable. However, allocating each child with a unique identifying number akin to a national insurance number, and requiring all councils to hold a register of children who are not in school (Department for Education & Phillipson, 2025) are not immediately recognisable as key priorities of child wellbeing. They are vital safeguarding measures. Indeed Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson states that ‘keeping children safe will always be my first duty as education secretary’ (Department for Education & Phillipson, 2025). She states this unapologetically and that is to be applauded. However, safeguarding is not a synonym for wellbeing, and an analysis of the bill finds that wellbeing is not referenced beyond its title. In this sense, it is quite literally, wellbeing in name only.

So, what is it about?

Following a decade of increasingly powerful multi-academy trusts, intense pressure on performance measures and the commodification of education at the expense of children’s wellbeing, this reduction of some of the freedoms which powerful academy trusts have enjoyed is welcome. However, this bill is about politics, not people. Labour is the party of the people, and the people in this case, are children. The voices of children about their subjective wellbeing are notably missing from this bill. This is a significant omission as article 12 of the UN convention of rights of the child sets out in international law, the expectation that children should be consulted on the issues that affect them (The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990). The promises of increased provision for children’s mental health and wellbeing are not front and centre as the title of the bill would suggest. Whilst it is crucial that we safeguard children, this bill does not address measures to ensure their wellbeing and healthy development. We argue that is not sufficient for children to simply survive in school, they must be given every opportunity to thrive there. Children’s charities and watchdogs share similar views:

Minds Ahead is deeply concerned that the recently proposed Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill lacks a clear and explicit focus on mental health support in schools. This critical legislation overlooks the growing mental health crisis among children, young people, and school staff, missing a vital opportunity to create meaningful change in education. (Minds Ahead, 2024)

Why does this matter?

So, we cut the cost of uniforms and ensure that all children are given their right to a place in their local school. It is a start.  However, a recent report from the Children’s Society, found that more children and young people were more unhappy with school than with any of the nine other areas of life in the survey (Chollet et al., 2024). Without a systemic change to the fundamental purposes of school in England, there is a risk that this bill might have a detrimental effect on children’s wellbeing, especially for our most vulnerable children. Krischler et al. (2019) argue that simply placing children in a general education classroom is not conducive to their inclusion. Instead, they argue that inclusion requires the development of ‘good practices’ (p.644) such as restructuring the curriculum towards individual learning processes, and training teachers to embrace an inclusive mind and skill set. We are currently a very long way from this reality, as Minds Ahead explain ‘Every day, we witness the profound impact of unaddressed mental health issues in schools: disengaged students struggling to thrive and overwhelmed teachers left to manage these challenges without adequate support.’ 

Concluding thoughts

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is perhaps better represented by the title ‘The Children’s Safety and Schools Bill’. This would make it clear that wellbeing is an issue still to be addressed, rather than the assumptions one might derive from the current title. It would offer hope that, in line with Labour’s original vision for Children’s Recovery, resources, training and staffing for children’s wellbeing and mental health will be made a priority within the foreseeable future. In its current iteration however, the question remains, ‘Where’s the Wellbeing in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill?’

References

BACP. (2024, January 16). Labour launches Child Health Action Plan. The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. https://www.bacp.co.uk/news/news-from-bacp/2024/16-january-labour-launches-child-health-action-plan/

Chollet, D., Turner, A., Marquez, J., O’Neill, J., & Moore, L. (2024). Good Childhood Report 2024. The Children’s Society. https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/information/professionals/resources/good-childhood-report-2024

Department for Education, & Phillipson, B. (2025, January 8). Children’s bill to keep children safe from exploitation. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/childrens-bill-to-keep-children-safe-from-exploitation

Krischler, M., Powell, J. J. W., & Pit-Ten Cate, I. M. (2019). What is meant by inclusion? On the effects of different definitions on attitudes toward inclusive education. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 34(5), 632–648. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2019.1580837

Minds Ahead. (2024, December 19). Why the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill Fails to Address the Mental Health Crisis in Schools. Minds Ahead. https://www.mindsahead.org.uk/why-the-childrens-wellbeing-and-schools-bill-fails-to-address-the-mental-health-crisis-in-schools/

The Labour Party. (2021). Labour’s Children’s Recovery Plan (15059_21). The Labour Party. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/15059_21-Childrens-Recovery-Plan.pdf

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990). https://www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/unicef-convention-rights-child-uncrc.pdf

UNICEF Innocenti. (2020). Worlds of Influence: Understanding what shapes child well-being in rich countries (Report Card 16). UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. https://www.unicef.org/media/77571/file/Worlds-of-Influence-understanding-what-shapes-child-well-being-in-rich-countries-2020.pdf

Ros McLellan is Associate Professor in Teacher Education and Development / Pedagogical Innovation at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge University. You can read her most recent work here: Katsantonis, I., Symonds, J., & McLellan, R. (2024). Longitudinal relations between child emotional difficulties and parent-child closeness: A stability and malleability analysis using the STARTS model. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health, 18, 85  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-024-00777-1

Catherine Fraser-Andrews is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education, Cambridge University, and a specialist teacher for whole school inclusion.