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.
