New government figures have cast light on the large number of Strictly Orthodox boys who appear to be missing from the school system.

There were 1,735 girls aged from 11 to 15 atttending registered Jewish schools full-time in Hackney, the London borough with the country’s largest Strictly Orthodox community, compared with a mere 256 boys, according to data recently released by the Department for Education.

The figures may not be comprehensive because some Charedi schools are not included in the latest set of data - but they nonetheless indicate the huge difference between girls and boys among the most traditional groups in Strictly Orthodox society.

Whereas girls commonly take a number of GCSEs at school, boys often go to yeshivah at 13, where they receive minimal or no secular education.

Although the government has long been aware of the “missing boys”, it has failed to find a solution.

A DfE document in March 2018 said that tackling children in unregistered educational institutions was “a priority”

But it put the responsibility for doing so on local authorities and Ofsted - and both the inspection service and Hackney council say they need to be given greater legal powers.

A report from Hackney published a year and a half ago on unregistered yeshivot warned, “The fact that a section of the population are not receiving the education deemed to be needed to thrive and live independently cannot be parked indefinitely.”

Yeshivot have successfully argued they are not technically schools under the current legal definition and therefore not bound by the same educational rules.

Some in the Charedi community have also pointed out that the highly publicised clashes between Ofsted and registered Orthodox schools have discouraged institutions outside the system to submit to the authority of the state.