Draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Establishment of Schools) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: Martin Vickers

Ali, Rushanara (Bethnal Green and Stepney) (Lab)

† Botterill, Jade (Lord Commissioner of His Majesty’s Treasury)

† Collins, Tom (Worcester) (Lab)

† Cross, Harriet (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)

† Darlington, Emily (Milton Keynes Central) (Lab)

† Fox, Sir Ashley (Bridgwater) (Con)

† Franklin, Zöe (Guildford) (LD)

† Gould, Georgia (Minister for School Standards)

† Naish, James (Rushcliffe) (Lab)

† Niblett, Samantha (South Derbyshire) (Lab)

Pritchard, Mark (The Wrekin) (Con)

† Rankin, Jack (Windsor) (Con)

† Smith, Sarah (Hyndburn) (Lab)

† Strickland, Alan (Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor) (Lab)

† Voaden, Caroline (South Devon) (LD)

† Wrighting, Rosie (Kettering) (Lab)

† Yemm, Steve (Mansfield) (Lab)

Yohanna Sallberg, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

Second Delegated Legislation Committee

Tuesday 30 June 2026

[Martin Vickers in the Chair]

Draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Establishment of Schools) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026

I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (Establishment of Schools) (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2026.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 20 May 2026.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 changes the legal framework for opening new state funded schools. It ends the legal presumption that new schools should be academies, and helps to ensure that new schools can be delivered quickly where they are needed, by enabling proposals from local authorities and voluntary organisations as additional routes to delivery. That provides greater flexibility in the system, including in circumstances where suitable academy trust capacity is limited.

The statutory instrument makes consequential amendments arising from those provisions. The amendments, which are to both primary and secondary legislation, are necessary to ensure that references to the legislative framework for opening new schools are correct and consistent across the statute book, and to update provisions to ensure that they are compatible with the new legislative framework. The amendments are minor and technical in nature and do not introduce any significant new policy.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act repeals section 6A of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, relating to the presumption that new schools should be academies. Arrangements for inviting proposals for new schools are now contained in an amended section 7 of the 2006 Act. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act also replaces sections 10 and 11 and of the Education and Inspections Act with an amended section 10. The draft regulations remove references to section 6A and section 11 in other primary and secondary legislation, and replace them with references to sections 7 and 10 respectively, where necessary, providing legal clarity. The amended provisions relate to land given to a local authority on trust for educational purposes, transfer of employment, proposers of new schools, governance of new schools and local government reorganisation.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act sets procedures for the establishment of new pupil referral units by local authorities. The draft regulations extend legislation to apply to newly established pupil referral units in two cases. Currently, where a new maintained school replaces an independent school, a teacher of the independent school transferring under transfer of undertakings legislation to the new school may choose to retain their existing terms and conditions or choose to opt in to the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document. The instrument extends the provision so that it applies when an independent school is replaced by a pupil referral unit, affording teachers the same choice.

Secondly, the statutory instrument applies and extends regulation 5 of the School Governance (New Schools) (England) Regulations 2007 to pupil referral units, when only one school proposal has been published under sections 7 or 10 of the Education and Inspections Act. A local authority is able to put in place governance arrangements for a maintained school in anticipation of proposals being approved. That will also apply where only one proposal for a pupil referral unit has been published. These amendments will ensure legal clarity and consistency.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.

This statutory instrument amends provisions within the Education and Inspections Act in relation to new schools. Let me start by acknowledging the one positive aspect of these regulations, which is to make it easier to create new pupil referral units. The previous Conservative Government supported PRUs and expanded provision of alternative education to children who need additional help. In particular, the alternative provision academies achieved better results, according to Ofsted, because they were allowed to innovate and take control of their curriculum.

Unfortunately, this Government have not learned that lesson, either in relation to alternative education or traditional schooling. Regrettably, the focus of the statutory instrument is to crack down further on academies and the freedoms they enjoy.

The Academies Act 2010 allowed more schools to benefit from academy freedoms, to innovate and to improve standards. Those rising standards are one of the proudest achievements of the previous Government. Research by the Education Policy Institute found that pupils attending the early sponsored academies achieved outcomes equivalent to roughly one GCSE grade higher in subjects, compared with similar pupils in predecessor schools.

Academies are now educating millions of children across England, to their benefit. Although no system can guarantee success in every case, academy trusts are strongly represented among the highest performing school groups in the country. Across the border in Wales, where the Conservative education revolution did not occur, standards have lagged behind. Welsh pupils have been disadvantaged compared with their English counterparts.

Labour’s assault on academies is short sighted and wrong. It speaks to its need for ever more control. The Conservatives know that giving academies freedom to innovate helps more children to get a decent education. That is why we will oppose the statutory instrument.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers.

I appreciate that these draft regulations are technical, but they touch on issues that directly impact families in my constituency, particularly those of children with special educational needs. I hope that the Minister will bear with me and be able to clarify a number of issues.

In Guildford and across Surrey, the shortage of specialist state school places has reached an unacceptable level. Parents are telling me repeatedly that there is simply nowhere appropriate for their child to go. Sometimes, children are placed miles from home and are left in settings that are unsuitable. As Surrey county council cannot always meet its statutory duties, it is increasingly reliant on expensive private placements or pupil referral units. Those do great work, but they were never designed to support children with significant and long term special educational needs.

I see that the regulations expand procedural powers around PRUs. What safeguards will ensure that councils, including Surrey county council, do not end up using the PRUs as a substitute for specialist provision that they are unable or have failed to deliver? PRUs play an important role, but they should not be the default destination for children whose needs are not being met elsewhere.

Another concern I have is that, if the Government are altering how new schools are proposed and approved, where is the guarantee that councils will plan and build the necessary specialist provision? We see this in Guildford and in Surrey. The number of children who need specialist placements but do not have them is unacceptable, and the track record on place planning is not great. Families are left waiting, fighting and appealing, all because state provision just does not exist.

The draft regulations assume a level of competence and capacity in local authorities that, sadly, in my county council is not always borne out by experience, despite some fantastic officers. Could the Minister set out how we will ensure accountability in proper place planning?

Ultimately, my Lib Dem colleagues and I support the SI measures, but I would appreciate if the Minister could explain how the regulations will ensure the provision of high quality, state funded specialist support. What assurances can she give to families in my constituency that failures will not continue to be repeated?

I welcome the explanation of the draft regulations, but I wonder if the Minister could provide clarification, because there seems to be a contradiction. The draft regulations remove the legal presumption that new schools should be academies, yet through the Children’s Wellbeing and School Act, the Government intend for all schools to be academies. Why are they encouraging local authorities to open maintained schools if they will then have to go through a governance change in the next couple of years to become an academy? Surely, that is disruptive, time consuming and potentially unnecessary for the school.

I thank Members for the range of important questions, although I think they are broader than the individual draft regulations we are discussing today.

I will start with the question about special places in specialist schools and how we can ensure that there is consistency. As part of the Government’s reforms to SEND—special educational needs and disabilities—we are proposing the introduction of new specialist provision packages. Those will be developed by a national independent panel and will set out the broad range of provision we expect to be available in every community. Local authorities will have a duty to provide specialist provision packages—that is, the type of special provision that, as the hon. Member for Guildford has set out, is missing from too many communities.

To fund that measure, we are investing £3.7 billion into creating new specialist places. That money is going into the system now, and we are setting very strong expectations on local authorities to deliver new specialist provision both within mainstream schools on an inclusion basis and, where necessary, in new special schools. The policy that forms part of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act makes it easier for local authorities to set up new maintained schools.

On the specific question about pupil referral units and their role in the system, we will be very clear in the specialist provision packages about the kind of support we expect for children with internalising and externalising social and emotional needs. As we have set out in the SEND reform consultation, we want the role of alternative provision to be focused on really reintegrating children back into school. The Experts at Hand model we have developed is about using some of the best practice from really high quality alternative provision to support mainstream schools. The SEND reforms are subject to consultation, but I hope that gives a wider reassurance.

The hon. Member for South Devon asked why we have created these new powers. As she correctly said, we have set out a steer to the system to say that we expect schools to move towards being part of collaborative trusts. The current system means that there are real geographical discrepancies, and sometimes there is not a trust available to set something up quickly, so we want local authorities to have the flexibility to respond quickly to demands and to offer that provision where it is needed.

The hon. Member for Bridgwater raised the wider, more general debate about academisation. I am glad to hear his support for academisation; as he knows, it was something that a Labour Government first introduced. We support that system because we see so many benefits for schools, including collaboration and resilience, from being part of multi academy trusts. We are setting out a direction to say that is the way in which we expect the school system to move, and we want those freedoms to be available to all schools.

We want to have really strong standards and consistency in critically important areas. We know some of the real challenges that young people face in misinformation and the need for digital literacy in a changing world. Our new national curriculum, on which we have consulted widely with schools, multi academy trusts and local authority schools, will set the standard we want for all children, and we think it is really important that all schools teach that. It is critical that children have access to a qualified teacher, so we are setting very clear standards through the schools White Paper on not only issues such as inclusion but offering the benefits that come from being part of a multi academy trust, which is a really sensible approach to developing the new system. The draft regulations are really about implementing policy that has already been debated and discussed.

Question put.

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Committee rose.