The Government must take urgent action against illegal schools to protect thousands of children

Investigations by The Independent have prompted Ofsted to estimate that 3,000 children may be attending unregistered schools, outside all the protections of the law

Most people recognise a strong ethos when they come across it, but struggle to define it (Getty)

Diversity in schools is a good thing. Indeed, one of the weaknesses of education in the UK is that schools are too similar. Secondary schools in particular tend to be uniformly large, with a uniformity of teaching style, when many pupils would benefit from being in smaller groups and from a wider range of teaching methods.

Schools should also offer variety in their culture and value systems, the intangible quality of a school known as its ethos. Most people recognise a strong ethos when they come across it, but struggle to define it. Which may be why governments have so often in the past looked to religious institutions as a way of taking a school ethos off the shelf.

Usually, this is either beneficial or neutral – a Church of England ethos is often close to no ethos at all – but in some cases a religious identity for a school is against the interests of its pupils. That is why there are protections in law against the teaching of creationism as science and against the promulgation of racism, sexism and homophobia.

Unfortunately, the desire of some parents to provide a religious education for their children is so strong that they seek to avoid the laws designed to protect the rights of those children. This is taking diversity too far.

The Independent has led the way recently in reporting the existence of illegal faith schools in Britain, and today we report exclusively estimates by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, of the extent of the problem, which goes wider than simply religious schools. It suspects that there are at least 170 unregistered schools in England, attended by perhaps 3,000 children.

This is a serious problem that demands an urgent response. Previous investigations by The Independent have reported allegations from former pupils and whistleblowers about children being beaten and teachers working without criminal record checks. These are basic issues of child safety, in addition to the concerns about an unbalanced curriculum in ultra-Orthodox Jewish or fundamentalist Muslim or Christian schools. In light of the findings, the Department for Education and Ofsted announced their own investigations.

As we report today, Ofsted is now preparing a number of court cases against suspected illegal schools. Victor Shafiee, Ofsted’s deputy director of education, said inspectors were “absolutely optimistic” about their ability to shut down illegal schools. “If I thought this was going to take 10 years [to fix] I would be really, really disappointed,” he said. “It’s not. We need to make an impact very, very quickly and act as quickly as we can, together with the DfE and the local authority.”

This is an encouraging response. No one wants to see heavy-handed surveillance of children, such as the ContactPoint database started in England by the Labour government in 2005 but abolished by the coalition in 2010, or the Named Person scheme currently being disputed in Scotland. But it should be possible to monitor unregistered schools without an intrusive database of all children.

Let us promote diversity in education, including the right of parents to teach their children at home, but ensure that we have a responsive system of regulation to keep children safe, to guarantee minimum standards and to make sure children learn about their place as citizens in a tolerant and inclusive society.