Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the call by Ofsted’s Chief Inspectors to introduce legislation to deal with illegal unregistered schools.

The department is considering a number of steps to strengthen Ofsted's ability to tackle unregistered schools. This includes the proposals outlined in the consultation on regulating independent educational institutions, which was published on 14 February 2020 and suspended on the 7 May due to the COVID-19 outbreak. We intend to restart this consultation in the autumn, when appropriate. Once the consultation is completed we will consider our next steps on the proposals, which include changes to the registration requirement.

In the February 2019 'Integrated Communities Action Plan', the department committed to legislate to strengthen Ofsted’s powers in relation to unregistered schools. We are therefore working with Ofsted to identify areas where additional powers would enable it to better investigate unregistered schools and support prosecutions. We will announce proposals to do this in due course.