Thousands of British boys can barely read or write English aged 16, with some of them routinely beaten in unsafe schools, because the government allows a strict religious group to deny them an adequate education, The Times has found.
Hasidic Jews allow girls to study a range of secular subjects and take GCSE exams but boys from the isolationist ultra-Orthodox community are usually taught in private schools, where Yiddish is the primary language.
Young boys receive a maximum of two hours of secular lessons each day, often from part-time teachers who have received little training, before vanishing en masse from school rolls at the age of 13 to enter unregistered religious schools where no English is spoken.