Illegal religious schools

For over a decade, we have led the national campaign for action on unregistered religious schools and work closely with former pupils of such settings, as well as current members of closed religious communities, to highlight their experiences and provide evidence to the authorities.

Our work has secured repeated, high-profile media attention on the issue and prompted the establishment of Ofsted’s unregistered schools team, a council enquiry into unregistered schools in Hackney, and, ultimately, to the Government recognising the need to legislate. As a result, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill the new Labour government is proposing is set to introduce a ‘Children Not in School Register’, create a new ‘offence of operating an unregistered independent school’, and ‘provide Ofsted stronger powers to investigate’. These are hugely welcome measures, which we are supporting as the Bill goes through Parliament.

In depth

Experience of pupils in unregistered schools

In 2019, Ofsted revealed that at least 6,000 pupils were being educated in illegal schools. This figure will only have increased since then. The inspectorate has repeatedly called on the Government to take action on the problem. The education provided in many unregistered religious schools is known to be narrow in its scope, predominantly scriptural in its content, and deeply conservative, intolerant, and extreme in its outlook. In a series of advice notes to the Secretary of State for Education in 2015 and 2016, former Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw detailed the findings of inspectors in a number of unregistered Muslim settings, including ‘a narrow Islamic-focused curriculum’, ‘inappropriate books and other texts including misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic material’, and ‘children and young people… at significant risk of harm and indoctrination’.

In March 2018, the then Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman, told the Education Select Committee that intolerant and extremist teaching in unregistered faith schools was ‘as bad as it has ever been and is deteriorating rather than improving’. She also expressed serious concerns about teaching materials found in these schools, including ‘books by people banned from entering the country,’ and ‘books advocating men beating their wives as punishment’.

Similarly, Ofsted reports published by us exposed the situation within illegal Charedi Jewish schools, revealing that the curriculum ‘encourages cultural and ethnic insularity’ and prevents pupils from ‘developing a wider, deeper understanding of different faiths, communities, cultures and lifestyles, including those of England.’ Former pupils reported that they only study the Talmud and the Torah, often for fourteen hours a day, six days a week, and leave education as adults unable to speak any English, in spite of sometimes being third or fourth generation Londoners. They also report having frequently experienced physical abuse by staff and being aware of child sexual exploitation as well.

In 2021, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published a report on child protection in religious organisations and settings. Its report substantially focuses on issues related to out-of-school settings, particularly illegal schools. The report provides significant evidence of widespread abuse in these settings, and makes the argument that such abuse is enabled due to the lack of regulation. The IICSA recommends closing these loopholes.

Ofsted’s work

In its 2024/25 Annual Report Ofsted said that children who attend unregistered, or illegal, schools remain ‘at risk’ as a result of ‘no formal external oversight’ of safeguarding, health and safety, or the quality of education. A 2025 Ofsted report into inspections of unregistered schools found that since the unregistered schools team was established in 2016 it has carried out 945 inspections of 669 settings. Of these 669 settings, 18% were determined to have a faith ethos, though for many of the others it is impossible to know. Disappointingly, it has only secured seven prosecutions. This highlights the need for Ofsted to be given more powers to tackle these settings and their proprietors. 212 warning notices had been issued to 184 settings.

There is a clear need for stronger legislation to support Ofsted to carry out its work. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill would define such settings as ‘independent educational institutions’ – a new class of institution that can then be regulated out of existence through Ofsted powers to inspect.

Inadequate legislation

In 2018, we welcomed the first successful prosecution of the proprietors of an illegal school. This was followed by another in early 2019. However, currently, relevant authorities like Ofsted and local councils do not have sufficient powers to investigate and close all unregistered schools, and some of those operating them have even vowed to continue doing so after prosecution. This is because some illegal schools argue that by only operating for a limited number of hours and/or only providing religious instruction, they do not meet the definition of an independent school, and so do not have to register as such.

The definition includes that pupils receive ‘experience in linguistic, mathematical, scientific, technological, human and social, physical and aesthetic and creative education’; ‘acquire speaking, listening, literacy and numeracy skills’; and are taught English and PSHE. So where schools don’t do that, they therefore don’t meet the definition. So, such unregistered schools argue, because they don’t meet the definition, they don’t have to register.

Rather, the illegal schools claim that they are part-time settings (meaning that Ofsted does not have the power to inspect them), and the pupils attending them receive their main education at home. Presently, there is no requirement for home-schooled pupils to be registered with the authorities. We first became aware of this loophole in the law in 2015, not long after the schools started using it.

In 2018, the Department for Education publicly acknowledged this issue for the first time and, in 2019, launched a consultation on a compulsory register of home-educated pupils. It also committed to making legislative changes to address the problem of illegal schools as part of the Integrated Communities Strategy Action Plan.

In May 2022 the Conservative Government published the Schools Bill, parts 3 and 4 of which respectively planned to introduce a register of home-educated children, and give Ofsted more powers to inspect independent educational settings. The plans passed through the Lords with cross-party support, but unfortunately, the Schools Bill was dropped for reasons unrelated to illegal schools at the end of 2022. The Conservatives said it would bring the law back, if a suitable legislative opportunity arose, but didn’t do anything further before the 2024 General Election.

When it entered power, Labour announced similar measures in its King’s Speech. They have now formed part of the Government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Once they become law, these measures should finally provide the authorities with the powers to shut down illegal schools. In 2026, better regulation of home education was linked to wider work on cohesion as part of the UK Government’s cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters.

What we’re doing

• We campaign for the introduction of the legal provisions necessary to take meaningful action against such settings. As part of this we also call for robust regulation of out-of-school settings or part-time schools (e.g. madrassas and yeshivas), many of which are known to operate covertly as full-time illegal schools.

• We worked with Parliamentarians to get the strongest possible legislation to tackle illegal schools through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. In particular we raised the need to expand Ofsted’s powers of inspection in the hope that this will capture many illegal settings that have evaded detection by the authorities. We also worked with Parliamentarians to guard against any attempts to weaken proposed legislation.

• We responded to a DfE consultation on out-of-school settings calling on the UK Government to introduce a mandatory national registration and regulation scheme for out-of-school settings, warning that any voluntary approach would fail to protect children.

• Holding meetings in parliament for MPs/peers to hear about the experience of former illegal school pupils.

• We have repeatedly supported and facilitated former pupils of such settings to speak out, including through meetings with parliamentarians and the media. Media coverage we have achieved includes The Times, BBC News at Six/Ten, BBC London News, Victoria Derbyshire, the Independent, the Evening Standard, and Newsnight. The Newsnight piece revealed that a number of illegal religious schools are nonetheless registered as charities with educational purposes, accruing all the benefits that charity status affords – something that remains true.

• In 2016 we prompted the creation of Ofsted’s unregistered schools team, and were the first external group to meet with that team, following the media exposés. We then held the first meeting between Ofsted, the DfE, and former pupils of illegal religious schools, who provided valuable evidence on the experience of children within such settings.

• We advise and support former pupils of illegal schools, including through our Faith to Faithless helpline, which provides bespoke assistance and resources to individuals who have left high-control religious groups.

• We support Parliamentarians through our work with the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group to raise the issue of illegal schools and the need for legislation to close legal loopholes used by the proprietors. We have supported Private Members’ Bills such as Lord Storey’s Home Education Registration and Support Bill. This sought to require parents to register their child if they were home schooled and for local authorities to maintain a register.

• We have a good working relationship with officials in the Department for Education (DfE) and Ofsted, and regularly respond to relevant Government consultations, provide briefings and evidence on the issue of illegal schools, including by connecting them with former pupils.

• We are a member of the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) and work together with them and other children’s rights organisations to lobby for better regulation around illegal schools via processes such as the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s Concluding Observations.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

Our work leading the campaign against illegal, unregistered religious schools in the UK has included:

• We have been public in calling for such reforms for some time. In 2016, for instance, we called for the regulation of out-of-school settings in response to a consultation, launched as part of the Government’s Counter Extremism Strategy. Those proposals were subsequently dropped following Church of England and Catholic Church lobbying – due to unfounded concerns about regulation of Sunday schools. The consulted-on proposals were explicitly constructed to only focus on settings that have individual pupils for more than eight hours each week, which would generally exclude Sunday schools. Humanists UK became aware of the churches’ influence in summer 2017 and then, that December, working with the Liberal Democrat front bench, got Justin Welby to admit he personally lobbied the then Prime Minister to drop the proposals. In their place, the Government decided to consult on a flimsy voluntary code of practice for out-of-school settings which was introduced in 2020.
• Launching the whistleblowing and blogging website Faith Schoolers Anonymous, along with former pupils of illegal schools.
• Securing recommendations in the 2016 Casey Review on integration for action on ‘segregated, supplementary and unregistered, illegal faith schools’, in line with evidence we submitted to the review.
• Repeatedly calling on the Government to address gaps in the law that prevent illegal schools from being shut down and prevent the children within them from receiving their right to an education.
• Prompting a consultation on unregistered schools (through our media work) held by Hackney Council, a local authority in which more than 1,000 boys are known to be taught illegally in strictly Orthodox Charedi Jewish schools. The subsequent 2018 report echoed all of Humanists UK’s recommendations.
• Working with parliamentarians to repeatedly raise the issues in Parliament, for example through the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (APPHG), and opposition front-benches. This helped prompt the Government to commit to taking action on home education in 2017 and on illegal schools more broadly in 2018, 2022 and 2024.

All of this work has convinced successive Governments to acknowledge the problem of illegal schools will only be solved by changes in the law and that these should include greater powers for Ofsted, better regulation of independent settings providing full-time education, and a register of home educated children. However, we will continue to pressure policymakers until such promises lead to concrete changes to the law and the children at risk in these settings receive the education they deserve.