Government to announce new laws to protect children from illegal schools

The government is set to propose new laws to protect children from attending illegal faith schools in the UK, The Independent has reported.

The news comes after The Independent launched an investigation, which revealed thousands of children are currently attending illegal faith schools in the UK and are at risk of abuse.

The Department for Education (DfE) has has confirmed the proposals will be brought forward to parliament in a bid to intervene in ‘unregulated education settings which teach children intensively’. The proposal will also be included in the forthcoming Home Office Counter Extremism Bill.

The Independent investigation found that thousands of children had disappeared from government records to be taught in illegal ultra-orthodox Jewish schools. It highlighted an instance where boys attending such a school received a purely religious education conducted in Yiddish, with many leaving school unable to speak English and with no qualifications allowing them to live independently.

The investigation also revealed that Hackney Council had been aware of the operation of such schools since 2010 but had destroyed the records of children going missing at the request of the schools.

A spokesperson for the DfE said: “Unregistered schools are illegal and unsafe – and we are taking unprecedented and direct action against them across the board to protect children, inform parents and support teachers. This includes strengthening our guidance to schools on safeguarding, and proposals to change regulations so that schools have a duty to inform local authorities in all circumstances where a pupil is removed from a school register. 

“We have also announced an escalation of Ofsted investigations into unregistered schools, a new tougher approach to prosecuting them and a call to local authorities to help identify any setting of concern.”