British religious schools penalized over new tolerance law

A recent regulation by the British Department for Education requires schools to “actively promote British values.” Authorities say the regulations aim to protect children from extremist teachings and prepare them for life in modern Britain, but some groups are concerned they pressure religious schools to compromise their beliefs.

The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) recently inspected Trinity Christian School in Reading, England. Ofsted’s 2013 inspection of the school had determined “Pupils are well-prepared for life in modern, multicultural, democratic British society through the teaching of the Christian principle to ‘love thy neighbor.’”

Its more recent inspection, however, brought different results. According to an October letter from John Charles, the school’s chairman of governors, to Nicky Morgan, Britain’s secretary of state for education, Ofsted sent Trinity an “Advice Note” letting the school know it “does not meet the new requirements for the spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development of pupils.”

The new standards require schools to actively promote “British values” such as democracy, individual liberty, and “mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.” Schools must also encourage respect for other people, especially those with traits protected under the Equality Act such as race, religion, gender reassignment, and sexual orientation.

According to Charles’ letter, the inspector said the school needed to provide evidence that it “actively promoted other faiths.” The letter also notes the inspector said the school “must not give a viewpoint that certain lifestyles are wrong.”

The new regulations “undermine our aims and would prevent us from teaching in accordance with our Christian foundation,” Charles wrote.

The revised regulations went into effect Sept. 29 and came on the heels of the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham, in which the city council received an anonymous letter detailing a strategy for overtaking schools with Islamic principles. A report of the subsequent investigation, released in July, said, “There has been coordinated, deliberate and sustained action, carried out by a number of associated individuals, to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos into a few schools in Birmingham.”

In light of those events, Ofsted began no-notice inspections of schools, but the inspections are raising concern among religious groups.

Beis Yaakov High School, an Orthodox Jewish school for girls ages 11-16, received an overall rating of “inadequate” on its September inspection despite the school’s rating of “good” for teaching quality and student achievement. “The school does not adequately promote tolerance and understanding of people who live their lives differently or live in different communities,” the report says, among other reasons for the rating.

The National Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools wrote to Morgan expressing its concern over inspections, especially inspectors’ allegedly asking girls questions on topics such as their awareness of homosexuality and whether they have boyfriends.

“I am sorry if these questions seemed insensitive or offensive,” said Ofsted’s chief operating officer Matthew Coffey, according to a Jewish News Online article. “Inspectors use age-appropriate questions to test children’s understanding and tolerance of lifestyles different to their own.”

The Jewish community isn’t the only one talking about the new regulations’ effect on religious schools. The headline of a recent article in London’s The Sunday Times reads, “Faith schools ‘must teach gay rights.’”

“It is complete nonsense to say that schools are being forced to ‘teach gay rights’ against their will,” responded the British Department for Education to The Sunday Times in a tweet. “Ofsted are rightly ensuring that schools do not indoctrinate pupils about gay people—or any other people—being inferior.”

The Christian Institute, a UK charity advancing Christianity and education, has also voiced its concern.

“At the beginning of the summer, we warned that if the Government brought in these regulations then they would be enforcing political correctness in schools,” said Simon Calvert, the institute’s deputy director, in a Christian Institute article. “We also said there would be hostility to the religious and ethical viewpoints of religious schools. The [Department for Education] said it would never happen, but since then we’ve been finding case after case where that’s exactly what’s going on.”