Illegal schools’ founders face being jailed
THE founders of three illegally-operated schools face being jailed after Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, ordered inspectors to draw up a legal case against them.
Ofsted has been told to prepare prosecution files against all 18 unregistered schools it has discovered – and to do so in all future cases – to stop pupils being exposed to extremist ideology.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, has disclosed that three Birmingham schools that offered a narrow Islamic-based curriculum using anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic material were shut last month. Independent schools offering full-time education in England must register with the Department for Education and accept inspection by Ofsted. Failure to comply can lead to a jail term of up to 51 weeks and a fine.
All cases will go before Mrs Morgan, who will decide if a prosecution can be pursued. She said: “Since 2010 we have taken robust steps to tackle unregistered schools and improve safeguarding. I have now asked Ofsted to prepare cases for prosecution against unregistered schools it has identified.
“For a child to spend a single day in one of these schools is unacceptable.”
Ofsted has investigated some part-time independent Muslim schools and found them wanting. They were dirty and contained literature which was ‘‘homophobic’’, anti-Semitic and hostile to women. In the jargon, such institutions are called ‘‘out-of-school education settings’’. The Department for Education (DfE) wants them better registered and inspected. A policy trap lurks here. On the one hand, I bet there are too many such Muslim schools offering low standards of education and high standards of bigotry.
On the other hand, it is surely a good thing that people have the urge to set up their own schools among the poor, rather than leaving it all to the state. No doubt the Ragged Schools, which did such good work in the slums in the middle of the 19th century, would today be ticked off by Ofsted for failing to have good lavatories and for teaching the Bible without reference to other faiths.
Yet Ragged Schools were fine examples of social entrepreneurship – what David Cameron (though he has quietly dropped the phrase) called the Big Society. A punitive regime of government interference will make it very difficult for informal Christian schools, often set up by evangelicals and strong among black communities, to thrive.
The nub of the problem is that the department understandably does not want to create a policy which looks at Muslim institutions with special attention, yet that is what, reality suggests, it should do. Because of radical Islam, there is a real danger of poisoning young minds which simply does not exist at present (though, in theory of course, it could) in Christian or Jewish settings in this country. The same difference is observable between mosques (many of which have dubious foreign funding) and churches and synagogues.
The problem arises not because of religion itself, but because of Islamist political doctrines which are intended to subvert our society. If there is to be much more registration and inspection, it should be of all bodies which wrap themselves in the green flag of Islam, not of every community group which wants to help the children of the neighbourhood. It’s the difference between the little jihadis and the little platoons. One must also ask how good inspectors are at detecting what is wrong. This is particularly hard when inspectors are looking at the teaching of ideas and beliefs. What counts as ‘‘homophobic’’? If a school is teaching that homosexuals should be thrown off cliffs (a favoured punishment in traditional Islam), society has a problem. But if it is teaching that marriage can only, in the sight of God, be between a man and a woman, a school is doing no more than repeating the universal view of all mainstream religions in history. Is that forbidden? These are the sort of deep waters in which bureaucracies can easily drown. This paper reported yesterday that Google is in talks with the Government about trying out driverless cars here. I long for the day of the ‘‘autonomous vehicle’’. I remember, when the driverless Docklands Light Railway opened in the late 1980s, that passengers were briefly anxious about the vacant seat at the front, but soon adjusted happily to a system that could not be disrupted by the failure of some fat, unionised employee to turn up for his shift. At present, most people are frightened by the idea of a car with no one behind the wheel, but it is human, not mechanical error, which causes the great majority of accidents. The safety of vehicles improves all the time. If car owners and their families are all asleep in the seats, and a computer is in charge, almost everything will be well. Individual ‘‘drivers’’ (the word will become redundant) will have no need of insurance, will not have to find a parking space and will be able to get drunk without hurting anyone. People will look back in amazement at the dreadful days when motorists had to stare at the road in front of them for hours each day just to get to and from work. Critics rightly worried about Jeremy Corbyn’s involvement in the Stop the War Coalition slightly miss the nature of the problem. It is not only that the movement is driven by hatred of the West, but also that it is a front organisation. Its motivators are extreme Leftists outside the Labour Party who depend on people within the party to give it enough projection and respectability to attract the support of the well-intentioned and naïve. Mr Corbyn provides the beard behind which the nasties can hide.
Throughout its history, the Labour movement has been put at risk by such infiltration and has usually taken robust measures to prevent it. But if the leader encourages the process, how can the party remain united? Yesterday was the anniversary of the death, in 1784, of Samuel Johnson. I looked up ‘‘labour’’ in the great Doctor’s great dictionary. His first definition is: ‘‘The act of doing what requires a painful exertion of strength, or wearisome travail; pains; toil; travail; work.’’ That seems an apt description. Then I looked up ‘‘party’’. It is defined as ‘‘A number of persons confederated by a similarity of designs or opinions in opposition to others.’’ An update to cater for Labour under Mr Corbyn would have to replace ‘‘similarity’’ with ‘‘disparity’’ and ‘‘others’’ with ‘themselves’.