‘Shameful’ negligence by Government towards illegal faith schools, says Humanists UK

Humanists UK has told the UK Government this week that its inaction on illegal religious schools is ‘shameful’, and renewed its call for legislative changes that will protect the thousands of children trapped in these settings.

Approximately 6,000 children are in illegal schools in England. Many of these establishments are religious and masquerade as centres for ‘part-time tuition’, thereby exploiting loopholes in the law. In reality they operate full time, and put children at risk with no regard for proper safeguarding. The scale of abuse is well documented.

Calling out loopholes

Humanists UK called for the changes in response to a Department for Education (DfE) consultation on revised guidance on elective home education (EHE). At present, loopholes in the law relating to EHE mean that unregistered settings which teach only a narrow religious curriculum can claim that their pupils are home educated. This allows them to avoid the need to register as schools with the DfE. However, in actual fact, many of the pupils at these settings will be attending them full-time. This means the religious instruction they are receiving is their only form of education. Nevertheless, because there is no register of home educated children, the DfE and local authorities (LAs), who are responsible for ensuring that all children receive a ‘suitable’ education, have no way of verifying whether these children are really home educated nor of compelling the schools to register if their pupils are actually full time.

Unsafe and abusive

In addition to providing a curriculum which focuses primarily on the study of religious scripture and excludes secular subjects like English, maths, and science, illegal schools have been found to operate in unsafe, unhygienic conditions. Former pupils also report being subject to physical and sexual abuse, and there is evidence of children being exposed to extreme misogynistic and homophobic content. But, despite the DfE being aware of the problem for more than a decade, little action has been taken. In 2022, the Government did bring forward a bill proposing to introduce an EHE register and change the law around which institutions are required to register as schools. However, it was later dropped due to controversies around an unrelated section of the proposed legislation. In May 2023, Conservative MP Flick Drummond introduced a Private Members’ Bill to introduce an EHE register, but PMBs rarely become law.

The draft guidance for LAs states that the Government ‘remains committed to introducing statutory local authority registers for children not in school’. However, this statement is not reiterated in the guide for parents and there is no evidence of a further commitment to taking further action on illegal schools. The guidance also contains a number of case studies, none of which refer to illegal or unregistered schools.

Humanists UK’s response to UK Government

In its response to the consultation, Humanists UK did note some more positive aspects of the guidance – such as a section which explains that a ‘suitable’ education should ‘enable a child to participate fully in the life of the UK by including sufficient secular education’ and that it should not ‘foreclose’ a child’s options to live an autonomous life in adulthood. But, since this provision isn’t mandatory (in fact, there is no statutory definition of suitable education), it said that vulnerable children risked being denied their basic right to an education, including functional maths and literacy skills.

Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Kathy Riddick said:

‘It is deeply shameful that the UK Government has allowed this problem to fester for so long. Illegal and unregistered religious schools provide a substandard education, flout safeguarding rules, and in some cases, promote extremist ideologies.

‘While there are aspects of this new guidance that will no doubt help local authorities to identify children who are not receiving a suitable education in their area, without a home education register and changes to the law to crack down on illegal schools, the education and welfare of thousands of children is seriously at risk. The Government must take immediate action to right this wrong.’