Hackney Council has again flagged its concern over safeguarding arrangements for yeshivot, saying that students remain “outside the line of sight” of professionals.
Yeshivot do not have to be officially registered because their religious curriculum is considered too narrow for them to be legally defined as schools, so they remain beyond the remit of the inspection service Ofsted.
The council’s Children and Young People Scrutiny Commission was told earlier this month that efforts to secure the required assurances on safeguarding arrangements at unregistered educational settings [UES} in the Orthodox community had “not been successful”.
There was, the commission was told, “no direct mechanism to ensure that the premises within which [children] congregate are safe; that the infrastructure is sound; environment appropriate; or that contemporary safer recruitment practices are being applied to those working frequently and routinely with children.”
It is nearly seven years since the commission called for legislation to ensure tighter regulation of unregistered settings.
The government’s new Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, introduced into Parliament this month, proposes compulsory registers for children in unregistered settings that will enable local authorities to know their whereabouts.
But the plan has been denounced by some within the Charedi community, who believe it will lead to state interference in traditional yeshivah education.
The commission was told that Hackney’s education service was aware of 1,582 children and young people who were thought to be in unregistered settings.
“The vast majority of children we believe to attend UES are teenage boys within the Orthodox Jewish community, who are withdrawn from a school where they receive a wider curriculum at aged 12, and placed in a yeshivah where they receive only religious instruction,” the report to the commission said.
It added: “Children attending UES remain outside of the line of sight of services in place to provide them with protection, as well as not having access to what is deemed to be a broad curriculum.”
A previous report to the commission has said the yeshivot were “not providing a suitable education” because their curriculum was exclusively religious.
Earlier figures suggested there were 29 yeshivot in the borough, which has the largest Charedi population in the country.
According to the most recent report, two “suspected” unregistered settings were identified by officials during the 2023/4 year. But no “illegal schools” had been found to be operating in Hackney during the year, the commission was told.
Although sessions set up by the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership to deliver safeguarding training to Charedi independent schools had been “very well attended,” similar sessions intended for yeshivot were “not attended”.
While a “comprehensive package of safeguarding support” had been shared with community leaders, there had been “no uptake”, the commission was told. Based on conditions seen at some unregistered settings, “this remains a significant concern”.
The Charedi charity Interlink provided safeguarding training for Orthodox schools, “however we don’t know how or if this is extended to yeshivahs,” the report said.
Motty Pinter, Interlink’s director of communal affairs, told the JC: "Interlink delivers regular safeguarding training sessions, held two or three times a year, for both men and women at basic and DSL [designated safeguarding lead] levels. Accredited by the City and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership, these sessions are consistently attended by staff and volunteers from voluntary organisations and educational settings, including yeshivahs.”
A spokesman for the Yeshiva Liaison Committee, which represents local institutions, said, “Yeshivahs are not schools, unregistered or otherwise. They are legal out-of-school settings and fully comply with all safeguarding and health and safety regulations.”
Hackney Council said this week that it would follow the new Bill closely “as it progresses through Parliament, as we engage in conversations with our staff and our partners to assess its implications for Hackney more fully in the coming weeks”.
The council has also written to the Department for Education to raise concerns about the impact of Labour’s tax policies on independent schools, which will have to begin to pay VAT on fees from next month and lose their substantial discount on business rates in April.
There are fears within the Jewish community that the financial pressures could force many Charedi schools to close, leading to the possibility of thousands of children having to be home-schooled or educated in unregistered settings.
