Ofsted call to monitor growth in private faith schools

Ofsted’s chief inspector has warned of the dangers of
privately-run faith schools which fail to teach children about
their responsibilities to British society.

There are now about 250 private faith schools – about 100
Muslim, more than 50 Jewish and more than 100 evangelical Christian
schools. Altogether the Muslim and Jewish schools alone are
educating nearly 24,000 pupils.

David Bell called on the government to monitor the growth in
these schools to ensure pupils are taught about other faiths and
“the wider tenets of British society”.

“Parents should be able to choose how their children are
education and should be able to pay to do so. That is the mark of a
free and open society.”

But he warned, “We must not allow recognition of diversity
to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a
nation. We must be intolerant of intolerance.”

Bell also criticised the teaching of citizenship in maintained
secondary schools, which he said was the worse taught subject.
Pupils’ political and social apathy poses a risk to the long term
cohesion of local communities, he warned.