By Sheila Mckenzie-
A couple who were the first to be convicted of running an illegal education setting have been permanently banned from running schools.
Maryam Bernhardt and Nacerdine Talbi were convicted of running the Al-Istiqamah Learning Centre in Southall illegally in 2018 .
They were investigated by Ofsted’s illegal schools taskforce, which aims to identify illegal settings by operating as schools without registering with the government. Both Bernhardt, who was the school’s headteacher, and Talbi, its director, from running independent schools, including academies and free schools.
The orders also prevent them from serving as governors of local authority maintained schools. Convicting the pair in October 2018, senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot, the chief magistrate of England and Wales, said the centre was providing 27 children with “all, or substantially all” of their education.
“The combination of factors…lead me to be sure that between September 3 2017 and November 15 2017, the centre was being operated as an unregistered independent educational institution providing full-time education,” she said.
Illegal schools are set up by individuals who have their own ideas of how to educate children to the best level, but many operators of these schools are also motivated by the amount of money they can procure through sponsorships and various funding. An ofsted task force has long been appointed to seek out illegal operators of illegal school and has closed a number down and also brought many before the courts