New powers to close illegal schools as Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill set to become law

The UK Government’s flagship Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has now passed all the Parliamentary stages and will receive Royal Assent today. This will bring in long-awaited reforms to help shut down illegal schools and provide better safeguards for children who are being denied a safe, broad, and balanced education.

Humanists UK has led the campaign for stronger action against illegal schools for over a decade, and has welcomed new powers in the legislation to strengthen investigations into suspected unregistered schools, and create a register of Children Not In School.

Stronger powers to shut down illegal schools

Children attending illegal schools are denied a broad, balanced, and objective curriculum, and are often subject to physical and, in some cases, sexual abuse. Settings are often housed in poor or unsafe conditions. They are able to operate because proprietors of these settings claim the children are receiving a part-time religious education, while being home educated. In reality, the young people attending these settings do so for 12 hours a day.

Once it receives Royal Assent, the new Act will make it harder for proprietors to exploit grey areas in the law. Measures developed through the Bill’s passage include strengthening Ofsted’s ability to investigate suspected illegal schools, including clearer routes to gather evidence and take action where settings are operating as schools without registration. Local authorities will now also be expected to maintain a register of all children who are home-educated, and have the powers to send a young person back to school if they deem the home education, setting, or person providing the education to be inadequate.

Humanists UK has supported the Bill’s intent to close loopholes that allow illegal schools to operate, and worked with Parliamentarians to guard against any attempts to weaken the legislation.

Some loopholes still need closing

While the Act should make it easier to tackle clear-cut cases of illegal schools, enforcement will still face challenges. Government guidance notes that out-of-school settings are not subject to regular inspection against agreed standards, and that some suspected illegal schools present themselves as out-of-school provision, an area that has historically been difficult to regulate consistently. Humanists UK has called on ministers to introduce a mandatory national registration and regulation scheme for out-of-school settings, warning that any voluntary approach would fail to protect children.

Humanists UK is also concerned about any weakening of regulations through the creation of a looser standards framework, which would potentially allow certain settings to avoid regulations. At the Report Stage of the Bill in the House of Lords, Education Minister Baroness Smith of Malvern told peers that ministers had not yet decided which standards would be prescribed, and confirmed that an ‘extensive engagement and consultation’ on what the standards would look like would follow in due course. Humanists UK will soon meet with ministers about this, and will be making the case that one set of standards should be applied to all settings.

A route now open to 100% religious selection in schools

Despite welcome progress on illegal schools, Humanists UK remains concerned that the Act has re-opened a path for new 100% religiously selective state-funded schools. This will undermine the fact that the 50% cap on faith free schools, which has proven to improve ethnic integration in schools subject to the cap, has been retained following a successful campaign. Humanists UK backed an amendment that would have required new schools opening under the Bill’s new school organisation law to have an admissions policy that limited selection based on the religion of the pupil and their family to 50% of places when oversubscribed. Disappointingly, the amendment was voted down by the Government at Commons Committee Stage. The amendment was brought back to the Lords by Labour peer and All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (APPHG) member, Lord (Mike) Watson, but rejected by ministers.

Humanists UK’s Chief Executive, Andrew Copson, said:

‘After over a decade of campaigning on this issue, we are delighted to see measures to tackle the scandal of illegal schools finally set to become law. Every young person deserves a broad, balanced, and safe education, and – although there remain some questions about how regulations will be applied – the measures agreed by Parliament are important steps toward making sure this becomes a reality. 

‘Sadly, Parliament has missed the chance to fix other serious problems at the same time. Allowing fully religiously selective schools risks increasing segregation and letting publicly funded schools discriminate against children simply because they are of the ‘wrong’ or no religion. We will continue to press ministers to act to close this loophole and make sure any new school opened serves the whole community fairly.’