Multiculturalism stops pupils learning British values: Ofsted

MULTICULTURALISM is clashing with efforts to teach children about British values, warns Ofsted’s chief.

Amanda Spielman, the chief inspector of schools, said it can lead to occasional ‘tension’ in the education system.

While the co-existence of religious groups was good for Britain, it could conflict with attempts to explain the principles of tolerance and respect, she said.

Mrs Spielman warned that in a minority of cases, Islamic faith schools are still indoctrinating children with extreme views and a narrow view of society.

Some are allowing youngsters to view material that encourage domestic violence and the ‘subjugation of women’, or deny the existence of gay people, she warned.

And in a few cases, ‘well-meaning’ schools are ‘naively’ implementing policies after seeking advice from extreme religious experts – not realising these views do not represent mainstream Islam. She added that there are also a growing number of secret Islamic schools known as madrassas being set up to deliberately avoid official regulation so that children can be schooled in a conservative religious context.

Mrs Spielman, who took over her role in January, said she ‘refused to ignore the findings’ and would continue to tackle those who seek to impose extreme views on children.

Citing the Rotherham sex abuse case, which was hushed up by officials who feared being branded racist, she said Britain had already seen what happens when ‘cultural tensions become undiscussable’.

Mrs Spielman said: ‘ The great religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism and Hinduism all make important and unique contributions to British society.

‘But there are occasions when multiculturalism can and does comes into tension with the expectation that students should be prepared for life in modern Britain.’ Her speech comes three years after the Trojan Horse scandal, in which religious hardliners tried to impose an Islamic agenda on secular state schools in Birmingham.

In its wake, the Government launched a drive to promote ‘fundamental British values’ including tolerance, equality, law and democracy. As part of inspections, Ofsted now checks that schools are not discriminating against girls, teaching homophobic views or giving children a warped view of UK society. Mrs Spielman said the vast majority of faith schools were good at teaching British values, but she had ‘real concerns’ for a few. She referred to sexist library books found in some schools by inspectors including one called ‘Women who deserve to go to hell’. Some children were being educated in ‘dank squalid conditions’ and taught religious texts at the expense of ‘ basic English and maths’, she said.

‘As a public body, the easiest thing for us to do would be to ignore the problem, to hope it goes away or to dismiss it as

‘Cannot ignore these findings’

someone else’s concern,’ she added. ‘But we cannot in good conscience ignore these findings, because we all know what happens when cultural tensions become undiscussable, when we allow concerns to be silenced.

‘We saw that in Rotherham and far too many other places as well.’ Mrs Spielman called for new legal powers to allow inspectors to seize inappropriate books.

Her comments, at the launch of Ofsted’s annual report, go further than those by her predecessor, Sir Michael Wilshaw. While Sir Michael began the investigations into religious fundamentalists taking over schools, he stopped short of specific criticism of issues arising from multiculturalism. In a speech, Mrs Spielman said it was vital to teach children about ‘understanding the values and culture that bind us as a society’.

She said: ‘This is an age in which the collective institutions that traditionally brought people together – churches, social clubs, even the 6 o’clock news – are in decline or are splintering into a thousand Twitter feeds. Education is one of the few unifying structures we have in society.

‘That is why it is right that we use compulsory education to make sure children acquire a deep understanding of and respect for the British values. ‘Imparting those values can sometimes be in tension with parental wishes or with community norms. We are seeing this tension playing out in some of our schools.’

The number of independent schools requiring improvement rose this year from 28 per cent to 32 per cent – and many were conservative Muslim, Christian or Jewish schools, Ofsted said.