The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 – what you need to be aware of

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act (“CWSA”) received Royal Assent in April 2026. Its scope is extremely broad and, in many ways, fundamentally reshapes key aspects of safeguarding, children's social care, and education. Its high-level aim is to deliver comprehensive reforms designed to protect vulnerable children and raise educational standards across England.

Here we explore some of the detail likely to be of interest to education and skills businesses.

Smartphone use in schools

This is one of the more high-profile features of the legislation. Detail was introduced towards the end of its progress through Parliament - the government responding to the debate concerning use of smartphones in school and potential impact on educational attainment as well as other risks arising from potential misuse.

A duty is imposed upon the headteacher across all categories of maintained schools and s342 non-maintained special schools to ensure that regard is had to guidance published by DfE from time to time. The current guidance published in February can be found at this link.

The guidance has a scope that covers the following:

• Use of mobile phones and other “personal interactive communication devices”

• The use would occur on the school premises and within school hours.

A key statement extracted from the guidance covers the potential overlap between use for personal social purposes and facilitation of education. There appears to be a general assumption that use of phones in the classroom should not be permitted but, with BYOD policies taken into account, Guidance states:

“All schools should be mobile phone-free environments by default; anything other than this should be by exception only.

All schools must have a behaviour policy which is aligned with the school’s legal duties and standards relating to the welfare of children. This is essential in establishing and maintaining high standards of behaviour ensuring that the school is a calm and safe environment for all pupils and staff. As part of this policy, schools should develop a mobile phone policy that prohibits the use of mobile phones and other smart technology with similar functionality to mobile phones (for example the ability to send and/or receive notifications or messages via mobile phone networks or the ability to record audio and/or video) throughout the school day, including during lessons, the time between lessons, breaktimes and lunchtime.

Where schools have a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scheme to facilitate the use of laptops or tablets for learning, such devices should be used in accordance with the school’s BYOD policy and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) acceptable use policy. BYOD policies should not include mobile phones.”

There are important caveats to these requirements.

The guidance does not override considerations under equalities legislation and recognises that certain pupils benefit from assistive technology in order to have best experience in education. Use in such circumstances is permitted.

There is also a recognition that in later years, as a pupil progress, schools are encouraged to recognise the longer term benefits that use of mobile phones provides as pupils move towards adult hood. Accordingly, there can be consideration of permitted use in the sixth form with access “at certain and limited times and locations”.

Businesses that provide educational apps and related services will want to follow developments in this area.

The government will now have power to amend the information society services age of consent requirement

With its introduction under GDPR in 2018 a consent provision was implemented in relation to cloud based services that are known as information society services. This includes Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Currently, individuals aged 13 or over may provide consent to the providers privacy arrangements. The government now has the option of increasing that age (below which an appropriate adult must provide the consent) to an age of up to 16.

Academy schools to align with maintained schools in a more unified school system

A number of reforms impact on the unique identity that academy schools have been able to assert as organisations that are technically independent of government. The funding rules for SATs and MATs will now require academy schools to deliver the national curriculum – the duty will be implemented in conjunction with the introduction of the new curriculum for English schools.

A further initiative to bring alignment is the intention to require academies to set salary scales by reference to national pay and conditions terms that will be common with maintained schools.

Limitations on requirements to wear defined school uniform articles also feature. Equally applicable to academy and maintained schools there will be a limitation on the number of items that may be specified (maximum of three excluding the school tie).

Businesses involved in data management and processing will note a number of reforms that may require responding to

These are particularly in safeguarding. Schools will now have a formal statutory role within multi-agency child protection teams alongside local authorities, police and health bodies. Stronger information sharing duties will apply and, to support management of information each pupil, will have a common individual identifier used by the school and agencies.

An increasing focus on children not in schools is a key feature of the government’s plans and DfE will now be entitled to create a statutory Children Not in School (CNIS) register.

A statutory duty will be placed on local authorities to identify and maintain records of children of compulsory school age who are not in full time school education. The policy intent is to close long standing safeguarding gaps by ensuring children educated at home, in alternative provision, or otherwise outside formal schooling are visible to public services, with strengthened powers for local authorities to intervene where education is unsuitable and tighter controls on deregistration from school in higher risk cases.

While the legal framework is now in place, most of the operational detail is still to come. The Government’s next steps are to develop secondary legislation, regulations and statutory guidance setting out how registers will operate in practice (including data requirements, processes and enforcement), likely supported by consultation with the sector. Implementation is expected to be phased, with rollout of CNIS registers and associated duties anticipated from late 2026 into 2027, alongside wider reforms such as unique child identifiers and enhanced multi agency information sharing to support safeguarding outcomes.