Hackney Council's Children and Young People's Scrutiny Commission has released a report into unregistered educational settings, calling on the Government to strengthen legislation to ensure children in unregistered 'schools' are safe.
In Hackney, around 29 unregistered yeshivas offer religious teaching to the Charedi Orthodox Jewish community.
Up to 6,000 children attend as many as 290 unregistered educational settings across the country.
This comes less than two months after Ofsted labelled that several faith schools are 'inadequate'.
The report suggests that local authorities do not have much power to do anything about rogue faith schools and calls on the government to bring in new legislation.
The worries in Hackney Borough concern there being a a lack of safety procedures and the narrow educational focus of yeshivas.
The investigation found serious failings in Government policy, which allows illegal 'schools' to operate without appropriate safeguarding, health and safety or curriculum standards
Cllr Chris Kennedy, Chair of the Children and Young People Commission said in response to the report: "Our research brought to the fore the fundamental clash between parents' wishes to educate their children at these settings and the rights of children to a broad education, where their safety is paramount.
"We've made a number of recommendations and have been clear that the Council needs to continue to do all it can to work with the Charedi community to ensure the safety of all our children. However, the Government holds the key to enable local and national agencies to bring unregistered settings into compliance, and I would echo the Council's repeated calls for them to do something about this situation."
