Britain’s Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) has downgraded more schools, many of them in rural predominantly white areas, saying students were “not prepared well for life in modern-day Britain”.
One of those which had its rating reduced by the government, the Charles Dickens School in Kent where the Daily Telegraph reports “almost all [the] pupils are white” had its reputation trashed because it failed to teach students “how differences in, for example, sexual orientation or ethnic heritages are valued and respected, and so students are not prepared well for life in modern-day Britain”. According to the report, the school therefore “is not a community in which people’s differences are sufficiently valued and respected”, and failed the ‘British Values’ test.
The latest wave of ‘zero-notice’ inspections hit 35 schools across the country, resulting in 23 dropping a grading level after the visit. Of those, inspectors found “concerns about the curriculum” in 17 schools, and of those 11 were “not preparing pupils for life in Britain today”.
Of the eleven schools identified by Ofsted of failing in British values, one was Church of England, one Catholic, one Jewish, and eight County schools controlled by their respective Local Education Authority.
The ‘British Values’ test now being applied to schools was conceived in response to the ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, in which a number of schools in the UK were found to have been infiltrated by radical Islamist elements. A report at the time found a “determined effort” in 25 Birmingham schools to push out moderate teachers.
The language of the criticism levelled at the Church of England schools, or what would otherwise be perfectly ordinary local community schools appears to be near identical to the words the government had for the infiltrated Islamic schools. In July the then new education secretary Nicky Morgan told the house of commons: “Teachers have said they fear children are learning to be intolerant of difference and diversity.
“Instead of enjoying a broadening and enriching experience in school, young people are having their horizons narrowed and are being denied the opportunity to flourish in a modern multicultural Britain”.
The Christian Institute, a group who campaign for the preservation of the Christian faith in public life and discourse and have launched the twitter hashtag #whoseBritishvalues, after the Government began to punish traditional local schools who instil insufficient “political correctness”.
Simon Calvert, the Deputy Director of the Christian Institute, told Breitbart London: “We are asking the question, what version of Britain is to be enforced through these laws?
“Is it the one most of us live in, where there is a diversity of opinion, or is it that of an Islington elite, a world where politicians look down on people who don’t share their liberal world-view?”
“The irony is the trojan horse scandal has become a trojan horse itself”.
Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has denied accusations that his organisation is being used as an instrument to force political correctness on children, insisting schools must be “realistic about the diverse society we now live in”.