Apparently, there are secret Jewish schools in Britain where children are taught nothing but the Jewish faith, where they are exposed to homophobic literature, where all music and the arts are banned and where they are indoctrinated by extremists. How do we know? Because Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has told us. Admittedly he didn’t quite say so in those terms but that is what he ended up implying on Radio 4’s PM programme earlier this week.
Interviewed by Eddie Mair about the 100 or so illegal schools reported to be operating behind the backs of education inspectors, Sir Michael described the problem. Parents abuse the law providing the right for home education by taking their children out of mainstream schools. But instead of educating them at home, what they in fact do is pay for them to attend clandestine schools in old factories and warehouses. Some have running drains through the middle of the classroom. They are run by ‘the wrong sort of people’ who are ‘associated with people with extremist views’. Often the only thing they teach is ‘religion’. ‘Homophobic literature’ has been found. Parents send their children there because they don’t want them to be taught music or the arts.
But on one thing Sir Michael sounded increasingly evasive. Prodded by Mair as to exactly who is running these schools, he at first sidestepped the question. When he was finally pinned down as to which communities were persuading parents to send their children to these illegal schools he mumbled: ‘there are some leaders in the Muslim community who are doing it and some in the Jewish community who are doing it.’
Sir Michael’s hearsay won’t do. These are serious charges he is making. He says he has information on these illegal schools which he has been passing to the government. He should let us know more: where are these schools, how many are run by Islamic extremists, and how many by Jewish extremists? The fact that we have plenty of documentary evidence of the former trying to manipulate the education system – such as through the Birmingham Trojan Horse scandal – but little if any evidence of the latter might lead some to suspect that Sir Michael was leaning over backwards just a little too far in an attempt to be even-handed and avoid the charge of Islamophobia. Or maybe he was just giving a couple of random examples of illegal schools and there are many others run by Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, pagans and what have you.
Either way, now he has told us a little bit, he has a duty to publish the full details of these schools so we know what is really going on.
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