Jewish girls’ school censored images of bare limbs and facts about history

AN ORTHODOX Jewish school redacted bare wrists and ankles from textbooks, Ofsted inspectors found, as they downgraded it to “inadequate”.

Teachers at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls’ School in Hackney, east London, also redacted passages from texts, such as removing references to the Queen’s supremacy and the Puritan challenge in a book about Elizabethan England.

The state school, which has been put into special measures following a damning Ofsted report, censored paintings by Picasso as well as pictures showing men and women together

‘It is detrimental to the pupils’ learning … and does not prepare them for life in modern Britain’

standing in a crowd. The school also provided no education regarding sex and relationships.

Inspectors said the alterations were “detrimental to pupils’ learning” and meant they were disadvantaged compared with other students.

The school, which educates girls from the ultra-orthodox Charedi community in Stamford Hill, did not prepare pupils adequately for life in modern Britain, Ofsted found. The report said that staff had “systematically gone through every book” to remove unwanted material.

Theo Bibelman, the chairman of governors at the school, said: “This report says more about Ofsted than it does about our school. A few months ago the Hackney Learning Trust judged us to be outstanding, and praised us for many of the aspects now deemed by Ofsted to be below standard.”