Ofsted itself could learn some tolerance

Inspectors have been overzealous in targeting faith schools that fail to uphold British values

It was a prayer meeting unlike any other: thousands of Orthodox Jews gathered outside a synagogue in the heart of their community in Stamford Hill in London, reciting psalms and praying for their schools to be delivered from the chastisement of Ofsted inspectors. A week on, and it looks like their prayers weren’t answered. Ofsted has judged the Hasidic school, Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls’ School, inadequate and accused it of censoring textbooks, failing to teach reproduction in science classes and limiting girls’ access to art by blanking out images in textbooks.

It is not the first time an orthodox school in the area has been targeted by Ofsted. Getters Talmud Torah, a boys’ school, looks set to close after the Department for Education decided to deregister it. Ofsted said it had stopped teaching secular subjects apart from English and maths. Another school, a primary, is embroiled in a row over whether it was falling short of standards, especially in its teaching on sexual orientation.

The chairman of governors of Yesodey Hatorah has called Ofsted’s intervention a secularist plot. What Ofsted is certainly doing is focusing hard on not only academic standards but also on whether schools are promoting British values.

Ever since the “Trojan Horse” case over Islamic extremism in Birmingham state schools, there has been anxiety about schools signing up to the values deemed officially British by Ofsted: democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

Most of us would agree with all of those values. The irony is that Ofsted itself has become increasingly intolerant. It might seem eccentric to the rest of us to cover up images of women’s ankles and wrists, or redact text books to cut out the purple prose of Arthur Conan Doyle, but if Yesodey school and its parents think it is wise to do so, then Ofsted’s intervention over them seems the embodiment of the nanny state. Like the law, schools should be judged by whether they prevent harm, and according to Ofsted itself the children at Yesodey were safe and happy, righteous and law-abiding, and did well in exams.

It was not only Ofsted, however, that was concerned about Yesodey: complaints were made against it by Humanists UK.

In recent years the organisation has become a sort of faith monitor, checking for signs of privilege given to faith groups – it wants secular chaplains in hospitals, for example – and signs of discrimination. In the case of Yesodey, Humanists UK highlighted the school’s censored books, including redaction to a reference to homosexuality in a section on Nazi beliefs, and seized on this as a sign of the school’s prejudice.

When a school starts limiting pupils’ access to history, sympathy for its cause will start to wane. But those who work in other faith schools should not comfort themselves that Ofsted’s approach to Yesodey is an isolated incident. Given that a local authority recently succeeded in banning Catholics protesting against abortion outside a clinic, could Ofsted soon be arguing that abortion is part of British values, and its merits be taught in all schools, including Catholic ones?

Gay people, women and, yes, people who display their ankles in public and read Sherlock Holmes stories – they all deserve respect, but so do people with religious beliefs.

For those running faith schools, a balance has surely to be struck. By all means teach children what the school and the parents advocate – the religion’s beliefs – but also be confident enough to explain why other people disagree.

Ofsted needs to be careful, too: in March its chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, told the education select committee that growing numbers of children are being sent to unregistered independent religious schools. If Ofsted cannot find a way forward with schools like Yesodey, the result may well be more children being home educated and attending unregistered schools that are much harder to inspect. And who knows what they will be learning then.