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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.
Consultation on draft regulations and statutory guidance which strengthens local authorities' duties under The Children and Young Persons Act (CYPA) 2008 to ensure the welfare of children is safeguarded and promoted when they are placed in health, education and other establishments for consecutive periods of three months or more. It requires representatives of Local Authorities to visit the children and provide services to help them maintain contact with their families.
The regulations and guidance will apply to Local Authorities in England and Wales. The Welsh Assembly Government is carrying out its own consultation alongside this one.
The regulations pertaining to this guidance aim to be brought into force on 1 December 2010. They are one of a raft of regulations and guidance arising from the CYPA.
Launch Date: Friday 19 March 2010
Closing Date: Friday 11 June 2010
This consultation seeks views on proposed arrangements for distributing the Dedicated Schools Grant to Local Authorities from 2011-12 onwards. Respondents are invited to comment on whichever elements of the proposed distribution methodology relate to their area of interest or expertise.
Launch Date: Monday 15 March 2010
Closing Date: Monday 7 June 2010
A JOINT DFID/DCSF GLOBAL LEARNING STRATEGY FOR SCHOOLS
Global learning means that the 21st century curriculum should encourage learners to be aware of global issues, enable them to evaluate information and events from a global perspective and to realise their individual responsibilities in an interdependent world.
DFID and DCSF have developed a new shared vision. We want all children and young people to be prepared for life in an interdependent world, to be empowered to engage with the global challenges they will face and to be encouraged to take action as global citizens. The strategy contributes to the existing curriculum and links with the duty on schools to promote community cohesion and the national framework for sustainable schools.
A recent review of DCSF and DFID funded programmes concluded that important progress has been made in strengthening the teaching of global issues in schools. The report also highlighted that further progress can be made through a more aligned approach which could both strengthen individual programmes and provide greater overall impact for the resources invested.
The draft strategy outlines a number of deliverables: a new governance structure; a new programme of support for schools; a new global teaching website; a new approach to the International School Award; a new approach to evaluating impact; and a new communication strategy.
Launch Date: Monday 8 March 2010
Closing Date: Monday 31 May 2010
This consultation seeks views on proposed new regulations for recoupment in England, which update the Education (Inter-Authority) Recoupment Regulations [England and Wales] 1994 (SI 1994/3251) in accordance with changes to primary legislation. Respondents are invited to comment on whichever elements of the proposed regulations relate to their area of interest or expertise.
Launch Date: Monday 8 March 2010
Closing Date: Monday 31 May 2010
The Education (Prescribed Public Examination) (England) Regulations 2010 consultation document sets out the proposal to revoke and replace the Education (Prescribed Public Examination) Regulations 1989 (also known as Statutory Instrument 1989 Number 377).
The 1989 Regulations list qualifications which were prescribed for the purposes of sections 106 and 117 of the Education Reform Act 1988, and for the equivalent provisions in sections 402 and 453 of the Education Act 1996 which superseded their counterparts in the 1988 Act.
The current 1989 Regulations are available from the Office of Public Sector Information website at; http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1989/Uksi_19890377_en_1.htm.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families aims to ensure that new regulations affecting schools will be brought into effect to coincide with the beginning of the new academic year. In order to meet this obligation for 1 September 2010, it has been necessary to shorten the consultation period from the suggested 12 weeks to 10 weeks. Please keep this reduced consultation period in mind while preparing your response.
Launch Date: Tuesday 2 March 2010
Closing Date: Tuesday 11 May 2010
The Teenage Pregnancy Strategy: Beyond 2010 document sets out how we want to build on the existing Teenage Pregnancy Strategy to strengthen its delivery in all local areas and make further progress towards halving the under 18 conception rate and improving outcomes for teenage parents and their children. The Strategy aims to give young people the knowledge and skills they need to delay early sex until they are ready, to ensure they are able and confident to access and use effective contraception when they do become sexually active, and to provide effective support for teenage parents. Success depends on the contribution from a range of agencies. We welcome your views to help inform the next phase of the Strategy. A separate consultation with young people and parents will be starting next month through Brook and Parentline Plus.
Launch Date: Thursday 25 February 2010
Closing Date: Thursday 20 May 2010
This is a consultation about the information Ofsted are required to notify to all local authorities in England and Wales when they take specific actions against providers of children's homes, residential family centres, fostering agencies, voluntary adoption agencies and adoption support agencies. Actions include such things as restricting new admissions to children's homes or residential family centres or cancelling a provider's registration. The consultation asks whether the detail to be provided to local authorities within notification to them is appropriate and whether the circumstances where notifications are made to local authorities are appropriate.
Launch Date: Monday 15 February 2010
Closing Date: Monday 10 May 2010
The Department is seeking responses to implementing the proposal made in the government's The Pupil and Parent Guarantees consultation document: "Parents will be expected to signal that they understand and will abide by schools' key policies (including their behaviour policy) during the application process". This proposal is designed to meet the government commitment that every pupil will go to a school where there is good behaviour and strong discipline. The change being consulted on is an amendment to the School Admissions Co-ordination Regulations, which will require all local authorities to include a statement on their common application form (CAF) which signals to parents the importance of complying with a school's policies once their child has been admitted and that by signing the form or making the application the parent is confirming that they accept those policies.
Launch Date: Thursday 11 February 2010
Closing Date: Thursday 25 March 2010
Consultation on draft Regulations to require local authorities in England to provide services designed to assist parents/carers to be able to continue to provide care for disabled children and young people, or to do so more effectively, by giving them access to short breaks from their caring responsibilities. Also consulting on associated draft Statutory Guidance aimed at helping local authorities, and others, to understand the legal context of their duty to provide short breaks; issues related to eligibility for short breaks; the range of short breaks required; local assessment of sufficiency of provision; planning and information.
Launch Date: Monday 1 February 2010
Closing Date: Monday 26 April 2010
The purpose of this consultation is to gather views on the draft document, Sex and Relationships Education Guidance. This document provides guidance to maintained primary, secondary, special schools and pupil referral units (PRUs) in England on all matters relating to SRE, including how good quality SRE can be planned and delivered, how to develop an SRE policy and how to support the health and social needs of all pupils with regard to sex and relationships. It is relevant to all staff, particularly senior managers and those responsible for co-ordinating, teaching and supporting the delivery of SRE. Headteachers and governing bodies are required by law to have regard to the guidance
Launch Date: Monday 25 January 2010
Closing Date: Monday 19 April 2010
This Green Paper sets out a wide range of measures to support all families as they bring up their children and to help families cope with times of stress and difficulty. The proposals recognise that while all families need some help, there are families in our society with complex needs and others who require additional - and sometimes non-negotiable - support.
The Paper's proposals aim to influence factors that can strengthen or weaken family life, such as the choices available about balancing employment with bringing up children; and how welcoming and accessible public services are to families of all kinds.
The Paper focuses mostly on supporting family relationships by enabling families to help themselves. It also considers the position of children and other family members when family relationships have broken down.
Some of the policy proposals can be implemented straight away; others are for consultation or will take longer to put into place.
Launch Date: Wednesday 20 January 2010
Closing Date: Wednesday 21 April 2010
The Pupil and Parent Guarantees (PPG) bring together in one place an account of the key components of a good education. The focus throughout is on the entitlements and the responsibilities of pupils and parents. The Guarantees will help to ensure that parents and pupils know what they can expect from schools. The Guarantees also spell out what schools can expect from parents and pupils in terms of their responsibilities to support schools. This consultation sets out the full text of the Pupil and Parent Guarantees and seeks views on whether the requirements for pupils, parents, schools and Local Authorities are clear and understandable, whether all the ‘musts' and ‘shoulds' detailed in the guarantees are correct and whether the responsibilities and entitlements for schools, pupils and parents are correctly balanced.
Launch Date: Monday 11 January 2010
Closing Date: Tuesday 6 April 2010
This consultation seeks opinions on new regulations that will set out the minimum set of matters on which governing bodies of maintained schools must invite and consider their pupils views. This relates to a new duty on maintained schools to invite and consider pupils' views on matters to be prescribed in regulations.
Launch Date: Monday 11 January 2010
Closing Date: Monday 29 March 2010
We are revising the entire suite of Children Act 1989 Regulations and guidance, including Guidance on the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, to meet the new duties inserted into the Children Act 1989 by the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 and respond to the commitments to transform outcomes for looked after children and care leavers set out in the White Paper "Care Matters". This consultation aims to review these changes in policy with the public, and solicit your opinions and ideas.
Joint consultation with the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services
We are undertaking a joint consultation with the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services on the new role for School Improvement Partners (SIPs) following the publication of the white paper, Your child, your school, our future: building a 21st century schools system. As part of this consultation, we invite you to complete an online questionnaire. (click here) The questionnaire will be open from 11 January 2010 until 9 April 2010.
Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England (SASE)
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) ran a consultation on the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England (SASE) from 23 February 2009 to 29 May 2009.
This consultation sought views on the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England (SASE). The SASE set out the requirements with which each recognised Apprenticeship framework in England must comply.
To access the original consultation and the Government response please click here.
To download the SASE from the BIS website please click here.
