Thank you for contacting my office. I very much appreciate you getting in touch about unregistered or illegal schools.
I understand that the Department for Education is taking firm action to deal with unregistered schools to ensure that settings are closed or shut down completely where necessary. I am aware that Ofsted has a dedicated unregistered schools team that investigates and inspects suspected illegal schools.
An inspector issues a warning notice at the end of an inspection
if she or he believes the setting is operating illegally as a school. I have
been informed that between 1 January 2016 and 31 March 2021, 494 inspections of
suspected illegal schools took place, of this 166 warning notices were issued
and 91 settings were closed completely.
The Department has made it clear
that it is important that children and young people are on a school roll, or
alternatively being electively home educated because they can be exposed to
certain risks if they are not being educated in either of those settings. The
Secretary of State for Education has said that the Department intends to
introduce new legislation which will require councils to maintain a register of
children who are not in school. This will help eliminate the concept of
'ghost children', as well as additional stronger powers for Ofsted to crack
down on illegal schools and ensure the criminals who are running them face
prosecution.
I can assure you that the Department is committed to ensuring that
all children receive an excellent education, in a safe and risk free
environment.
No comments:
Post a Comment