Education: Unregistered Schools

Lord Elton Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We are not specifically looking at madrassahs but we will be covering institutions such as those to which the noble and learned Baroness referred in our call for evidence, which has just closed. We will consider all this in the legislation we propose to bring forward in relation to institutions teaching above six to eight hours a week.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is looking for bad conduct. Does he agree that he is also seeing a good deal of very valuable instruction given to children who need to be integrated into our society and are handicapped in many ways because of their ethnic or geographic origin?

[Lord Nash]

We are concerned about the point my noble friend makes and about isolated communities, which is an area that Louise Casey has been asked to look at to see how we can improve integration. We are very active in our whole-school approach to making sure that children are brought up to understand enough about the different religions and beliefs in this country that they can be prepared for life in modern Britain.