Peers call for tighter rules on yeshivah regulation - The Jewish Chronicle

Members of the House of Lords have tried to strengthen proposals to regulate yeshivot in order to prevent evasion of the rules.

In another lengthy debate on the Schools Bill on Wednesday, peers including Lord Mendelsohn put the case for further amendments to ensure compliance.

But education minister Baroness Barran - whose portfolio includes faith schools - saw no need to add to the proposed legislation although she indicated the government would be willing to reconsider in the light of new evidence.

The Bill is intended to close loopholes whereby institutions such as yeshivot have escaped registration and inspection because they are not currently defined as schools.

Although neither Jewish institutions nor yeshivot were mentioned in the latest Lords session, government papers have explicitly stated that the settings most likely to be affected by the proposed measures were “yeshivahs serving the Jewish faith” and, to a less extent, Islamic madrassahs.

All institutions where children receive a “majority” of their education during the week will in future have to register with the Department for Education and undergo Ofsted inspections if the Bill becomes law.

But crossbench peer Baroness Meacher called for tighter regulation that would apply to settings where children receive a “quarter” of their education.

Otherwise, she feared, proprietors of currently unregistered settings “will get together and split their provision into separate morning and afternoon settings, or some other configuration such as one teacher taking kids in the morning, another in the afternoon”.

She said that the borough with the highest number of illegal schools was Hackney.

(The council - which estimates that up to 1,500 young teenage boys are learning in unregistered yeshivot - has been pressing for regulation for a number of years).

“It is worrying that children are not learning the most fundamental subjects, including maths and English,” Baroness Meacher said.

“Not only is the narrow religious curriculum in many unregistered schools unacceptable but these schools may have unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

“Ofsted says that it found settings with severe health and safety hazards, and other problems. No one is able to check on these things so long as schools evade registration.”

Lord Mendelsohn, one of the most prominent Jewish figures in the Labour Party, told the Lords: “Those who provide or use unregistered settings, many from closed communities and organised groups, have a strong intent to avoid the rules and no interest in balancing the rights to educate with proper safeguarding.

“They have used loopholes and the lack of investigative rights, access, capacity and data to avoid complying with the existing law, so it is vital that the Bill properly ensures that adherence follows its passage in law.”

Baroness Chapman of Darlington called for assurances that there was “no loophole or that an amendment will be used to close it”.

In her response, Baroness Barran said, “We do not believe it appropriate to regulate part-time settings until we have considered the response to the call for evidence on unregistered alternative provision”.

She said that a parent who sends their child to a setting “that provides only a narrow religious education with no secular education each weekday is very unlikely to be ensuring that their child receives a suitable full-time education”.

But she offered to meet Baroness Meacher and Lord Mendelsohn for further discussions.

There is a possible compromise but will either side agree?

Law seeks to regulate institutions not previously classed as schools

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