Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of children aged five to 16 years old who attend an unregistered state or independent school.

National statistics on the number of unregistered schools that serve the faiths stated in the question are not held centrally. Neither are details on the nature of the curriculum. However, we know from Ofsted’s Annual Report 2015/16 that at the time of publication, about a third of the settings inspected were associated with particular faith groups and were found to be deliberately teaching a restricted, faith-based curriculum.

The annual report is available via the attached document. The section on unregistered schools begins at paragraph 251.

The Government has had numerous discussions with a range of faith groups covering a number of matters, but no specific conversations about unregistered schools with the unregistered schools team. Nor have there been specific conversations between the unregistered schools team and the Children’s Commissioner or Chief Constables. However, the unregistered schools team has had a series of meetings with local councils to discuss how they, as well as the Department and Ofsted, can work collaboratively to help ensure children found to be attending unregistered independent schools and out of school settings are safe and are receiving a suitable education. We have kept the Local Government Association informed on progress. We, together with Ofsted, have had regular discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service and are close to agreeing a formal memorandum of understanding, to be published in due course, that sets out how each body discharges its responsibilities in relation to prosecution of cases for the offence of operating an unregistered school.

As reported by Ofsted in its annual report, the Ofsted team has only found a relatively small number of institutions operating as unregistered schools, and most of those have ceased operating.

Ofsted did not include a figure for the number of children in the unregistered schools that they had discovered, but given that the number of such institutions is relatively small, the number of children being educated in them is likely to be limited.