The Department for Education is seeking to create new powers to be able to suspend the registration of private schools where serious safeguarding failings pose a risk of harm to students.

It intends to give the education secretary the ability to intervene by making it a criminal offence for the proprietor of the school for it to continue operating while its registration is suspended.

The government has also said that existing action to close failing independent schools is “unnacceptable” as it can be slow and difficult to achieve where institutions show periods of improvement but are still failing to meet the required standards.

In a new document published today setting out its plans, it said: “This is not acceptable, particularly where institutions have long-term failings, including on safeguarding”.

As part of its plans, the government is proposing that the suspension of a private school’s registration will be enforceable by the creation of a new criminal offence that makes the proprietor of the school responsible if the institution continues to carry out activities that are causing concern.

It said this new offence would be punishable by up to six months imprisonment or an unlimited fine.

The Department for Education is also going ahead with proposals to improve Ofsted’s ability to investigate and support the prosecutions of illegal unregistered schools.

Schools minister Baroness Barran said: “For too long, some children have been able to fall through gaps in the system, spending most or all of their time during the day in settings that neither meet the required standards of safeguarding or quality of education.

“We will now move forward with our strengthened requirements for settings to register as schools and abide by the Independent School Standards, as well as enhanced powers for Ofsted to investigate where wrongdoing is suspected.

“Providers of these types of settings should be on notice - we will not stand by while they shirk their responsibilities to provide all children with a high-quality education, in an environment where they feel safe, valued and looked after.”

However, the DfE has dropped a plan to adopt a time threshold measure, which would have meant that settings operating for at least 18 hours per week would need to register as a school.

It said it had done this in response to consultation responses, including from Ofsted, which had said that settings will set their hours just under the threshold to avoid the need for registration.

Existing guidance states that the government would consider an institution to be providing full-time education (and therefore needing to register as a school) if it is intended to provide, or does provide, all, or substantially all, of a child’s education taking into account: a) the number of hours per week that is provided - including breaks and independent study time; b) the number of weeks in the academic term/year the education is provided; and c) the time of day it is provided.

The DfE consultation document says: “This approach has worked well in the prosecution cases that have been brought to date, and the way it is framed avoids the problem of schools avoiding registration by setting their operating hours at, for example, 17.5 hours per week.

“We therefore intend to incorporate factors based on this approach in the definition of a full-time setting.”