John Pugh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Pugh on 2016-02-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many unregistered schools there are in England and Wales.

Edward Timpson

We are currently investigating 21 institutions that may be operating as unregistered independent schools in England and have not applied for registration. However, this number often changes as new settings are established and existing ones close, or are confirmed not to be operating as schools. We have taken robust steps to tackle unregistered schools and improve safeguarding which includes being clear it is a criminal offence to operate an unregistered independent school. All these institutions have been warned that it is a criminal offence to operate as an unregistered school. We are asking Ofsted to visit and to prepare cases for prosecution as necessary.

We do not hold data on the numbers in Wales as the Department is not the regulatory body for independent schools in Wales.