Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made with the regulation and inspection of madrassas since the announcement made by the then Prime Minister in October 2015; and what powers local authorities and Ofsted have to intervene in the operation of madrassas where there is evidence of child abuse.

There is no definition of a madrassah in education law. An independent institution is required to register as a school provides full-time education to five or more pupils of compulsory school age or one or more pupils with an education, health and care plan (or a statement of special educational need) or who is looked after (within the meaning of section 22 of the Children Act 1989) and is not a school maintained by a local authority or a non-maintained special school. A madrassah will therefore only constitute an unregistered school if it is providing such education.

LAs have an overarching responsibility of local authorities for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children in their area, regardless of where they are educated. It is for local authorities to assess whether the threshold for intervention is met in the case of an individual child taking account of the impact and influence of environmental factors. However, wherever local authorities have reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm, they are under a duty to investigate. Local authorities should make whatever enquiries necessary to decide what, if any, action to take to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare. The police can of course investigate any reports that a crime has been committed in an out-of-school education setting.

The Government published a Counter Extremism Strategy in 2015, which set out plans to introduce a new system of oversight for out-of-school education settings – such as supplementary schools, tuition centres and madrassahs. To learn more about these settings, and the potential scope and impact of any regulatory system, the department issued a call for evidence. We will make an announcement about the outcome in due course.

We are supporting local authorities to use their existing powers, as described above, to tackle concerns about the safeguarding of children in unregulated education settings.