Ofsted has sounded a fresh warning of the risks to children educated in unregistered schools after revealing it has investigated more than 500 cases over the past three years.
The inspection service said it had investigated 521 settings between the beginning of January 2016 and the end of December last year and carried out inspections on 259 of them.
It inspected 18 Jewish, 36 Muslim and 12 Christian settings, while the remaining 193 were not of any faith or of unknown religious character.
But it gave no religious breakdown of the 71 settings issued with warning notices - of which 15 closed.
Victor Shafiee, the inspectorate’s deputy director in charge of unregistered settings, said, “The problem here is first and foremost about safeguarding. Many of these places are unsafe – with poor facilities and hygiene, badly trained or untrained staff, who may not have had any employment checks made on them, and little care for children’s health and wellbeing.”
A spokesman said “a very small number” of Jewish settings had received warning notices. But added that “most of them operate on the cusp of the law, by claiming they only offer a religious education, so, under the current legislation, we aren’t able establish that they are in fact illegal schools”.
The inspectorate has previously called for tougher legislation to close what it regards as loopholes in the law.
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