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Concern over Westminster-Wales deal in pupil data pilot and late Bill changes

news / March 17, 2025

Concern over Westminster-Wales deal to use pupil data in pilot and parents kept in the dark

(NEWS: March 17th 2025, updated April 8th**)

A combination of last minute legislative changes, with powers for local and national governments to compel data sharing from education providers, raises serious concerns over the lack of parliamentary scrutiny and any communication to learners or their parents. The laws enable data transfers to start in Wales from April 8, 2025.

The government has proposed amendments only a few days before the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was debated on Monday 17th of March in the House of Commons, that significantly expand the Bill that was so far only about England, but will now include Wales. The new proposals amend both the Education Act 1996 and The Children Act 2004, to compel state registration of learners under 19 and their providers of almost any type of education outside state-funded settings. The changes affect every child in Wales—including those in state education, private, independent schools, as well as those in Elective Home Education (EHE) and otherwise not in state schools.

Particularly alarming is the use of children in Welsh private schools singled out as test subjects in the data extraction “pilot” in 7 authorities (Cardiff County Council, Carmarthenshire County Council, Gwynedd Council, The Isle of Anglesey County Council, Monmouthshire County Council, Powys County Council, and Rhondda Cynon Taff County Borough Council). Simultaneous changes last week to the Children Act 2004 (via Commencement Order 2025 No.10 that came into effect 3 days after being made) and the Education (Information about Children in Independent Schools) (Pilot) (Wales) Regulations 2025 appear to be designed to enable those children in Wales to be guinea pigs for a trial of the national powers, with a window for the pilot set in the legislation to run from 8 April 2025 to 20 May 2025.

With less than a month to go until April 8th, parents and guardians are still in the dark as to what data will be extracted, if and why it will be sent to Westminster, and how it will be used.

Despite these profound changes, no public scrutiny has been permitted in the Senedd** of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill effects for Wales or at a national level so far, despite the Bill being so far through its legislative process, because Wales was never in scope until now.

The connected Welsh government statement made on March 10th fails to mention most of the wider implications for families in Wales or make any mention of the private, independent schools pilot secondary legislation and its time limited window in April-May.

The Welsh Government’s 2024 consultation about “children missing education” proposed that Local Authorities would receive not only data from every child’s education records but from their NHS records too**. However, that public consultation a year ago, did not address the additional powers in the national Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will permit children’s named data to be sent from the LAs onwards to the Westminster Department for Education. From there, in England, state school pupil data is already distributed to third parties including for commercial reuses, and the Department has further aspirations to use pupil data for AI product development. There are no safeguards in place to prevent this commercial exploitation of children in Wales as well, once the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill passes.

There are still unanswered questions about which children will be affected when, how families can object to data sharing if they are not told what is going on, whether their objections will be respected, or the nature of the “unique national ID number” children will be assigned, mentioned in the Bill without further details—despite the legislation already being far along in the process.

The Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) has criticised the Bill’s lack of supporting evidence, and its Equality Impact Assessment has flagged risks of discrimination against Gypsy, Roma, Traveller communities, Jewish families, and digitally disadvantaged parents as did the 2024 Welsh Government consultation on similar data sharing powers, but Liberal Democrat MP Munira Wilson was refused time to discuss the Impact Assessment in a recent Commons debate in Committee Stage on January 30th. No MP could ask questions about the impact for families in Wales because it was not included until his week. The rushed nature of these new amendments added on the very last day they could be admitted, without proper consultation, threatens to erode public trust and compromise children’s privacy.

A request by concerned parents for the data measures’ risk impact assessment was refused by the Welsh government.

We are calling for

  • an immediate national statement on the full nature of the trial and what the Westminster-Wales deal involves,
  • a delay in the Bill process to allow proper parliamentary scrutiny by MPs, especially any MPs for Wales, and to ensure the Bill is ready for scrutiny before passing over to the House of Lords,
  • full and open discussion with private school parents whose children will be affected by the pilot,
  • and a halt to data-sharing pilots until all concerns are addressed with meaningful safeguards put in place.

**(UPDATE April 8, 2025) After this post was published, the Senedd then gave approval on April 1st of The Children Act 2004 (Children Missing Education Database) (Pilot) (Wales) Regulations 2025 in a 15-minute debate. Debate failed to scrutinise the health data transfers planned that this additional regulation permits, with no clarity from which providers this may be (GPs, nurses, opticians etc). “A Local Health Board and a GMS contractor must secure that the information it holds, which is specified in paragraphs 1 to 3 of Schedule 2 in relation to a child, is disclosed to the child’s relevant pilot local authority by 30 April 2025.”

This affects every child in Wales in or outside any kind of education.

The Child Rights Impact Assessment of this legislation stated the risk to children from those transfers, “the proposals may result in a child not receiving their article 24 right, if families fail to register their children with health practitioners if didn’t want their personal data shared.” (ref section: Article 24) The Impact Assessment contradicts the impact assessment of the proposals in 2024, that found not that, “proposals would enhance article 30 by ensuring minority or indigenous groups …are not disadvantaged,” (Article 30) but instead that the minorities would be at risk of singling-out those children from the measures, with a similar, “disproportionate effect” that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill found, (para 166, page 42) for which this Wales project is in effect, a national policy pilot, “we recognise that the CNIS proposals may have a disproportionate impact on those of Jewish ethnicity and the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller (GRT) community.” When Munira Wilson MP tried to ask a question about the equalities impact about the latter Bill in Committee Stage, the Minister shut it down and moved swiftly on (p309)

Lawmakers continue to misuse dead children to argue for this change of law, for whom the change would have made no difference. “We must do all that we can collectively to avoid truly tragic cases such as Sara Sharif’s murder from ever happening again,”  prefaced one Senedd representative’s remarks. Sara Sharif was not only on a school register, with her home address still on record when she was removed from school, but she was on social services list of interventions from before her birth. As the Victoria Climbie Foundation wrote, “Sara Sharif was not a hidden child – she was known to the authorities.”

That the identified impacts on children in England and Wales include they may be withheld from necessary healthcare, or experience ethnic discrimination, should warrant both thorough scrutiny and changes of approach in this pilot in Wales. Neither impact has been measured but concerns were dismissed by Lynn Neagle when raised, on April 1st (366).

“On the point of health boards and medical practitioners having to share information with local authorities, there is a recognition that this could discourage vulnerable children or their families from attending medical practices—those, perhaps, who are currently avoiding those interactions with their local authority. There is a risk that they may go on to avoid attendance at those all-important medical appointments if they feel as though there’s going to be an element of suspicion towards them. So, I wonder what assessments you’ve made of any potential risks in that area, and any additional workload for GPs in particular, and their training to identify, perhaps, those children who they would be required in this to flag with the local authority.”

She responded, “the assessment that we’ve made is that the risk of this is low, because parents who don’t want authorities, such as social services, to know about a child will have likely already taken separate relevant steps to remain undetected.” These are the very same handful of children who might be at actual risk, rather than all those who are going to be put on a database who are not. The absurdity of this, the risks and who will be to blame when the same harms happen that the measures have not helped, seems to have escaped the Minister’s response.

References

The latest briefing and links to further information can be found on our policy page.

    • Clause 4 (Information sharing and consistent identifiers) affects potentially any child in England (and Wales, contingent upon the adoption of government amendments proposed on March 10th)
    • Part 2, Clause 26 (Registration) of the Bill as of March 11, 2025 (formerly Clause 25 at Second Reading and Committee Stage) and noting that Clause 31 (Expanding the scope of regulation and includes 18-year-olds) affects every child in England who is not in state education (and Wales, contingent upon the adoption of government amendments proposed on March 10th)