How to pass Ofsted’s equality test
IN A recent circular, Judith Nemeth, executive director of the National Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools, bewailed the “onslaught” of Ofsted and the Department for Education against the “fundamental values” of Charedi schools.
One aspect of the inspection regime has troubled the Charedi sector more than any other over the past three years — the “British values” agenda.
Schools are actively required to promote tolerance and “encourage respect for other people” in order to immunise children against extremism. The government directs schools to “pay regard” to the nine “protected characteristics” covered by equality law — which include age, disability, religious belief, gender, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.
Charedi schools have run into difficulty because some inspectors insist it is not sufficient simply to teach respect as a general principle, while ignoring particular characteristics, such as sexu- al orientation, out of religious scruple.
Some Strictly Orthodox schools have found a way around the problem. The independent OYY Lubavitch Schools in Salford, for example, received a positive appraisal from Ofsted earlier this year, which noted pupils “know that not all children will have the same family structure to theirs”.
Although schools must pay attention to the legal “protected characteristics”, they do not specify “what you have to say about those characteristics,” explains Rabbi Mendel Cohen, principal of OYY’s boys’ section.
When it comes to sexual orientation, OYY addresses this in “a culturally and age-appropriate manner”. It is not a question of talking about samesex relations or marriages as such but acknowledging the reality that some children in the UK live in different family units “comprised of two mothers or two fathers and should be respected as human beings,” he says.
“So if we let the child know there is a child down the street who may have two fathers, I don’t have to go into the details — the sexual nature of what that means.”
As for families who differ from the traditional Jewish set-up, pupils will be told “very clearly, that the Torah value is different — this is not how we believe how God wants you to live.”
But disagreement with a person’s lifestyle does not negate the respect due to them as a human being.
As Lubavitch children are taught to go out and encourage people to do mitzvot — whether to shake a lulav on Succot or eat matzot on Pesach — so they would not shun a Jewish family with two parents of the same sex. “The fact that they know this family has a different structure, they won’t hesitate for a moment to knock on the door and give them a matzah,” says Rabbi Cohen.
What Lubavitch is comfortable with may not go for other Charedi groups. But it demonstrates how a Strictly Orthodox school can keep the education authorities happy while remaining true to its religious ethos.