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Welcome to the Department for Children, Schools and Families e-consultation website. From here you can access all of our live and archived consultations, or view the results of consultations.
Consultations are listed in date order – the most recent at the top of the list. You can also use the search facility to find a consultation by title or keyword.
To view and/or respond to a consultation, click on the title.
You can create your own user account and subscribe to receive email updates when new consultations are published by visiting the Register page. Creating a user account also allows you to partially complete your response and return to it at a later date.
In The Protection of Children in England: A Progress Report Lord Laming made a number of recommendations which the Government has proposed to address through the revision of Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance. This revised draft guidance addresses 17 of Lord Laming's recommendations, as indicated in the National Safeguarding Delivery Unit's earlier pre-consultation. The revised draft also updates the guidance to reflect changes to the policy and legislative landscape since Working Together was last published in 2006.
Launch Date: Friday 18 December 2009
Closing Date: Thursday 11 February 2010
On 22 October 2009, the Department for Children Schools and Families noted in the LA email that it would be launching a consultation on the revised statutory Childcare Sufficiency and Assessment Guidance to inform the 2010-11 assessment and action planning process. The guidance builds on the existing guidance included in Securing Sufficient Childcare and the Childcare Sufficiency Assessment Guidance (both published in 2007) and is intended to assist LAs in their assessment of sufficiency and action planning. The primary purpose of this consultation is to seek LAs' views on the structure and content of the draft guidance.
Launch Date: Friday 18 December 2009
Closing Date: Friday 26 February 2010
This consultation seeks views on draft regulations underpinned by legislation set out in sections 206-224 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 ("The Act"). The Act extends the remit of the Local Government Ombudsman to enable investigation of complaints from parents and young people in relation to individual school matters. The regulations must be in place if we are to begin testing the new service in April 2010. This means that the Consultation period is necessarily short. However the Department would be pleased to discuss any aspect of the regulations during the consultation period and will ensure that there are further opportunities for stakeholders to feed in their views as we move towards testing and evaluation.
Launch Date: Tuesday 15 December 2009
Closing Date: Friday 5 February 2010
Section 154 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 gives school governing bodies the power to require a pupil to attend premises outside the school for the purpose of improving behaviour. It also gives the Secretary of State powers to make regulations to impose restrictions in relation to governing bodies’ exercise of this power. This is a consultation on these regulations and on the accompanying guidance.
Launch Date: Thursday 10 December 2009
Closing Date: Thursday 4 March 2010
The White Paper, Back on Track, announced plans to introduce information passports, personalised learning plans and a core entitlement for all pupils in alternative provision. The core entitlement includes the curriculum, the number of hours provision pupils should have per week and the maximum waiting times for placement in alternative provision and for the engagement of support services. The statutory guidance, for consultation, sets out the Government's expectations in these key areas.
Launch Date: Thursday 10 December 2009
Closing Date: Thursday 4 March 2010
The purpose of this consultation document is to gather the views of a wide range of stakeholders who work with local authorities, school staff and children and young people on bullying and staff grievance issues, on the scope of these new duties, and how best to support schools in implementing them. We want to ensure that the new duties meet our central policy objective which is to keep school staff and pupils safe from bullying and harassment, while at the same time keeping any additional bureaucratic burdens on schools to a minimum.
This policy highlighted in the document only applies to England. The policy highlighted in the document is devolved, in differing settlements, to the administrations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. It is the benefit of devolution that the Devolved Administrations can tailor their policies and thus deliver public services to meet the specific needs of their countries.
Government and the Devolved Administrations will continue to work closely together to build a more prosperous, stronger, fairer UK, whilst recognising their particular and varying responsibilities.
Launch Date: Thursday 10 December 2009
Closing Date: Thursday 4 March 2010
The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on revised regulations covering the registration arrangements for children's homes, fostering agencies, independent adoption agencies, adoption support agencies and residential family centres. The current registration regulations for these establishments also cover adult and health settings. However, the Health and Social Care Act 2008 will remove adult and health settings from the Care Standards Act 2001. The revised regulations being consulted on here therefore only cover children's social settings.
Launch Date: Tuesday 8 December 2009
Closing Date: Tuesday 2 March 2010
The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on the draft Sure Start Children's Centres guidance. Following the Apprenticeships, Children, Skills and Learning Act 2009, the document contains statutory guidance to local authorities and, in some cases, Primary Care Trusts and Jobcentre Plus, on the provisions of the Act in relation to children's centres. This guidance builds on the existing DCSF guidance for children's centres. As well as relevant to LAs, PCTs and Jobcentre Plus , the guidance will also be relevant to staff at children's centres and organisations who work with children's centres. The Act also establishes the inspection of children's centres by Ofsted, and views are also sought on a policy statement explaining the inspection proposals.
Launch Date: Monday 7 December 2009
Closing Date: Monday 1 February 2010
This consultation seeks views on changed Regulations and National Minimum Standards (NMS) affecting the provision of education, care and information in independent schools, non-maintained special schools (NMSS) and in all schools providing boarding/residential accommodation.
NMSS regulations are being consolidated to bring together the principal regulations and all amendments, and to take account of new requirements.
The regulations governing the standards for, and the provision of information by, independent schools are also being amended to take account of new requirements.
The National Minimum Standards for Boarding Schools and Residential Special Schools consolidate two existing sets of National Minimum standards to create common standards across both settings. In addition, all the documents respond to certain of Sir Roger Singleton's recommendations in his review of safeguarding arrangements;Keeping our School Safe'.
The consultation covers 4 separate documents, and respondents are invited to comment on whichever element(s) relate(s) to their area of interest or expertise.
Intended Audience
The consultation is aimed at all stakeholders with an interest in residential school provision; it relates specifically to any school in the maintained, independent or non-maintained special school sectors that provides residential provision for less than 295 days. It is also aimed at stakeholders interested in the Regulations that apply to independent schools and non-maintained schools.
Launch Date: Thursday 3 December 2009
Closing Date: Thursday 11 March 2010
This consultation seeks the views on a proposal to exempt from Ofsted registration childcare between friends that is not for monetary payment.
Launch Date: Thursday 3 December 2009
Closing Date: Sunday 31 January 2010
This consultation is about the setting of annual fees for inspection of children's social care settings, adoption and fostering agencies, local authority adoption and fostering functions, boarding schools, residential further education colleges, residential special schools and residential family centres. Our aim is to put in place a more transparent approach to the setting of fees, and move towards full cost recovery for inspection over time.
Launch Date: Wednesday 18 November 2009
Closing Date: Thursday 11 February 2010
The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on the draft Care Planning Placement and Case Review Regulations (England) 2010 and related guidance. The consultation seeks to provide information on the major changes in the regulations and guidance and explore the views of practitioners and delivery partners on potential barriers to implementation of the requirements of the regulations and guidance.
Launch Date: Monday 16 November 2009
Closing Date: Monday 8 February 2010
This document brings together guidance on Children's Trusts and Children and Young People's Plans into one piece of statutory guidance. It also includes further advice arising from the recent changes to the Children Act 2004 made by the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Act 2009. The document also includes the draft new Children and Young People's Plan regulations. The consultation is on both the draft new statutory guidance and the draft new regulations.
Launch Date: Friday 13 November 2009
Closing Date: Friday 29 January 2010
The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on the draft document, Drugs: Guidance for Schools. This document provides guidance to maintained primary, secondary, special schools and pupil referral units (PRUs) in England on all matter relating to drug education and the management of drugs within the school community. It is relevant to all staff, particularly senior managers and those responsible for co-ordinating, teaching and supporting the delivery of drug education.
Launch Date: Friday 13 November 2009
Closing Date: Monday 15 February 2010
This consultation relates to arrangements for birth registration by unmarried parents, where they are not co-operating to register their child's birth together. The draft Regulations set out the detailed processes for registering births in these cases. They aim to ensure that - wherever possible - the names of both parents are registered.
Launch Date: Tuesday 10 November 2009
Closing Date: Tuesday 2 February 2010
The Children's Plan Progress Report commits the Government to reviewing the secondary legislation which governs the information that schools record and provide on pupils (in educational and curricular records and school reports); and on themselves (in prospectuses).
This consultation sets out proposed amendments to this legislation, which are intended to help parents to have better access to information about their children's learning and development, at the right time. When implemented, the revised regulations will be accompanied by guidance for schools and local authorities - views on the content of the guidance are also welcomed.
Launch Date: Monday 9 November 2009
Closing Date: Monday 1 February 2010
HASLOC will replace Health and Safety of Pupils on Educational Visits: a good practice guide 1998 (known as HASPEV) and the 3-part supplement we published in 2002. HASLOC will have a wider audience across all children’s services (not just schools). It sets out the enabling nature of sensible risk management and how to reduce 'red tape'. It flags up the lessons learned from serious incidents. HASLOC also sets out how and why staff can expect to be treated fairly if a participant is injured despite their care. In general HASLOC works at a high level and leaves most of the detail to the operational parts of the Learning Outside the Classroom Council's website which will carry downloadable material. In this consultation, we seek views and suggestions to help us make this an accessible, user-friendly and effective guide for front-line professionals.
Launch Date: Friday 6 November 2009
Closing Date: Monday 8 February 2010
In May 2009, the Secretary of State wrote to all schools and local authorities seeking their ongoing support with transforming the school meals service and increasing the take up of school lunches. He urged everyone to tackle inadequate kitchen and dining facilities in support of these aims. DCSF and the School Food Trust have produced a range of resources for this work, including Kitchen and Dining Spaces, a design note, checklists to use when refurbishing or building kitchens and dining facilities, and A Fresh Look Guide on effective kitchen and dining spaces. This consultation sets out our proposals on amendments to the School Premises regulations.
Launch Date: Thursday 29 October 2009
Closing Date: Friday 22 January 2010
This consultation sets out proposals for a new accreditation process which is intended to identify the most suitable organisations to be Accredited School Providers and Accredited Schools Groups, through Academies, Majority Trusts (including National Challenge Trusts) and Federations. Accredited Providers will ensure improved standards in schools which are currently low attaining or otherwise underperforming. The consultation also sets out a proposed process for selecting sponsors to future Academy projects.
Launch Date: Wednesday 21 October 2009
Closing Date: Friday 22 January 2010
We consulted over the summer on changes to delivery of the free entitlement, which will be implemented through a revised Code of Practice for local authorities, from September 2010. As part of the second phase consultation process we will be publishing a package of documents for consultation. Included will be a draft Code of Practice which draws upon the findings of the first phase; a summary of responses to the consultation; the Government response and further questions ; new draft regulations reflecting the increase in the entitlement and an impact assessment on the extension from 12.5 hours to 15 hours.
Launch Date: Wednesday 7 October 2009
Closing Date: Friday 8 January 2010
This consultation seeks views on proposed amendments to The Children Act 2004 Information Database (England) Regulations 2007 (the ContactPoint regulations) which were made under section 12 of the Children Act 2004 and came in to force on 1 August 2007. They apply to England only. The ContactPoint regulations provide a legal framework for the operation and maintenance of ContactPoint (formerly known as the Information Sharing Index).
Launch Date: Friday 2 October 2009
Closing Date: Tuesday 29 December 2009
The National Commissioning Framework (NCF) will set out the core systems for planning, commissioning, procuring and funding for the education and training for 16-19 year olds, young people up to age 25 where a learning difficulty assessment is in place, and young offenders in youth custody. A draft version of the full NCF has been published for consultation. The consultation will run until 17:00 on 5 February 2010, and will provide stakeholders with an opportunity to review the proposed approach and feed in comments. It can be found here. The final version of the NCF will be published by the Young People's Learning Agency, in April 2010.
