Extremists target Ofsted over faith schools ruling

From The Times, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail

The chief inspector of schools has accused hard-left activists and religious extremists of trying to stop her clampdown on illegal Muslim schools with a campaign of intimidation. Amanda Spielman revealed that one of Ofsted’s regional offices has been forced to take additional security measures after inspectors were repeatedly sent extreme Islamic literature.

Amanda Spielman said she had been the victim of some “pretty venomous stuff”, receiving “nasty tweets” and threatening emails from what she believed to be a “mixture of Islamic extremists and the hard left”.

She told The Times: “I’m not easily bruised. I don’t fall over when I see a load of nasty tweets pointed at me but there has been some pretty venomous stuff. I had an email, which was the most threatening one, which was along the lines of ‘We know where you live and we can get you any time we want to’. . . It’s a mixture of Islamic extremists and the hard left but if we let ourselves be intimidated out of discussing these issues it’s children who will suffer.”

References to her private home address in London, which could be found online, were subsequently removed as a precaution.

In an interview with The Times, Ms Spielman said that confronting unregistered faith schools, many but not all of them serving poor Muslim communities, had, against her expectations, proved the toughest part of her role as Ofsted’s chief inspector, which she began in January.

This week Ofsted had to hire security for one of its regional offices that has been heavily involved in work concerning radicalisation. In one incident at an unregistered East London Islamic school, Ofsted inspectors were called ‘Britain First paedophiles’ before being accused of performing sex acts in order to get their jobs. The police are now taking action against staff at the school for breach of the peace.

A head teacher at another faith school phoned parents during an Ofsted visit to say inspectors were asking the children if they were gay. The head then asked whether the inspection should proceed after telling inspectors that angry parents were lining up outside the school.

She is concerned by the number of primary schools that include the hijab as part of their uniforms. “Girls are made to think, ‘Am I immodest if I’m not wearing one?’ at an age when a child shouldn’t have to worry about being modest,” she explains.

Some people are willing to turn a blind eye to what is going on because they fear being targeted themselves. “You really notice that people who say to you privately that you’re doing absolutely the right thing very rarely want to stick their heads above the parapet on the sensitive stuff,” Ms Spielman says.

Inspectors had found private faith schools where children did not learn English and British values were “meaningless”, she said. Her report said schools were “deliberately choosing” not to meet standards due to the tensions between legal requirements and community expectations.

The chief inspector has no intention of being silenced. As she flicks through a dossier of material found in Islamic schools, she points to the cover of a book called Women who Deserve to go to Hell, filed next to a text on the “rights of beating women”.

Ofsted said: ‘Amanda Spielman is determined to root out unregistered schools wherever they may be operating. Illegal schools pose a real a risk to pupils’ safety and leaves them vulnerable to radicalisation. That is why, where we find them, we do everything possible to make sure they are closed and that the children are quickly transferred to registered schools.’