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Children's News Feed

Automatically curated from DfE announcements, education news, and sector updates.

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Social Care 3 months ago

The Big Future: Speaking to children in Nottingham and Leicester

I wrote last week about why we should listen to children. This week, I have found myself thinking about what it means to give children a voice.  Sometimes, this is cultural. As I stood outside Nottingham University with my team, our conversation turned from the session with educational psychologists...

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Social Care 3 months ago

The Big Future: Speaking to children in Birmingham

I have been thinking about politics a great deal as I travel the length of England promoting my survey of children The Big Future.   I don’t mean what happens in Westminster, or what dominates the news. I mean the messy and beautiful business of how we go about deciding how we live togethe...

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Guest Blog: Ensuring ‘Every Moment Matters’ for babies, children and young people with life-threatening and life-shortening conditions, and their families – Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice  
Social Care Jun 4, 2026

Guest Blog: Ensuring ‘Every Moment Matters’ for babies, children and young people with life-threatening and life-shortening conditions, and their families – Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice  

Today’s guest blog comes from Sophie Andrews OBE, the CEO of Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice. Sophie has worked in the charity sector for 30 years and has operated in both National Chair and CEO roles. She was awarded an OBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours list. She is a publis...

Concerns grow over hair strand test reliability in Family Court child protection cases
Safeguarding May 26, 2026

Concerns grow over hair strand test reliability in Family Court child protection cases

Experts are raising alarms over the interpretation of hair strand testing in Family Court proceedings, highlighting cases where parents risk losing access to their children based on potentially flawed evidence. The concerns centre on whether current testing methods and their analysis adequately account for contextual factors that could affect results.

Walk to School Week: What do children say about walking to school? 
Social Care May 22, 2026

Walk to School Week: What do children say about walking to school? 

I launched my biggest and final survey of England’s children: The Big Future by going for a walk with some brilliant young people. I travelled to Cumbria, the first leg on a journey that will take me all over the country. I hiked with Scouts along Hadrian’s Wall, who told me about their lives a...

The Big Future: Speaking to children in Cumbria
Social Care May 17, 2026

The Big Future: Speaking to children in Cumbria

Last week, I launched my biggest survey yet of England’s children: The Big Future. But surveying children was not enough. I knew I wanted to continue to speak to, and crucially hear from, England’s children personally.  I began that work in Cumbria, at Hadrian’s Wall. I will end it at Land’s End. Ov...

Reflecting on the Festival of Childhood
Social Care May 15, 2026

Reflecting on the Festival of Childhood

Last Friday, I hosted my second Our Future, Our Voice: Festival of Childhood in collaboration with the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester. The event built on my inaugural Festival of Childhood, continuing my mission to make sure children’s voices are heard at the highest level of decision makin...

Taking The Big Future on the road: Listening to children in Carlisle
Social Care May 14, 2026

Taking The Big Future on the road: Listening to children in Carlisle

Today, I am in Carlisle, starting a journey across England with a simple but important purpose: to hear directly from children about their lives. I want to find out what they love, what worries them and what they want decision makers to do to make childhood better. Far too often, decisions about chi...

Children's Commissioner Data Reveals Scale of Childhoods Spent in Unsuitable B&Bs
Social Care Apr 16, 2026

Children's Commissioner Data Reveals Scale of Childhoods Spent in Unsuitable B&Bs

New data from the Children's Commissioner for England reveals that tens of thousands of children are spending significant portions of their childhoods in unsuitable bed and breakfast accommodation. The research highlights cramped conditions, lack of privacy, and children sharing facilities with strangers, prompting urgent calls for policy action to end this practice.