Just over two years ago when head of Ofsted, David Bell delivered a widely reported lecture on citizenship to the Hansard Society in which he warned about the potential threat to social cohesion posed by independent faith schools that failed to prepare their pupils for life in the pluralistic democracy that Britain is today.
For issuing this warning, as well as for urging the government to monitor their growth to ensure pupils at them learned ‘the wider tenets of British society’, Mr Bell received a drubbing from several Muslim community leaders.
Sir Iqbal Sacranie, then Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, accused Mr Bell of gross irresponsibility for having suggested they posed any threat to “our coherence as a nation”. Dr Mohammad Mukadam, chairman of the Association of Muslim Schools, accused Mr Bell of ‘Islamophobia’, challenging him ‘to come up with evidence that Muslim schools are not preparing young people for life in British society’.
Since then Mr Bell has moved from Ofsted, and Sir Iqbal Sacranie has also steped down from being MCB Secretary General to make way for Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, chairman of the East London Mosque and London Muslim Centre. It must, therefore, always remain conjectural whether, had he remained at Ofsted, Mr Bell would have taken up Dr Mukadam’s challenge by citing those Muslim schools that have since then been disclosed to be not adequately preparing their pupils for life in British society.
These schools include the King Fahd Academy in West London, recently found to be disseminating anti-semitic and anti-Christian literature to its pupils. They also include the Institute of Islamic Education in Dewsbury. Its Ofsted report, published at the end of February 2005, was highly critical of that part of its curriculum not devoted to Islam. Although catering for students aged 11 to 6, the Ofsted report revealed that its pupils were not ‘not allowed to read newspapers, or to listen to radio or television programmes’. Is that any way to prepare young pupils for life in British society?
This school, by the way, was until recently one whose joint head teachers was the father of Aishah Azmi, the teaching-assistant recently sacked from a state school for refusing to remove her niqab when teaching.
Mr Bell’s concerns would see to be well-founded, especially given a report in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph that over half of the 114 independent Muslim schools registered in England have not been inspected in the last five years.
Given his concerns and how apparently well-founded they seem to have proved, one has to wonder whether, during his time at Ofsted, Mr Bell could not have tried harder to ensure all Muslim schools received an Ofsted inspection within the three year period in which schools supposedly must receive one.
Comments (3)
Your commentary seems to take Dr. Bell to task for failing to do his job of having these schools inspected even as you report the way he was abused for sounding the alarm. Is this really fair? Did Dr. Bell receive the support needed to have the inspections done, given the way his alarm was received? It seems that the messenger may have been shot and then you still want to hold him to account to do his remaining job.
Posted by Dr. D | January 2, 2008 2:16 PM
Posted on January 2, 2008 14:16
Yet another example of a two tier nation being encouraged by and under the name of Islam! This has been noted in your publication "The 'West', Islam and Islamism".
Posted by andrew gardner-clarke | March 9, 2007 9:04 PM
Posted on March 9, 2007 21:04
This article seems to complement what you say here.
"Children's education and Adult politics"
by Cassandra Balchin.
http://www.opendemocracy.net
Posted by Alan | March 5, 2007 7:53 PM
Posted on March 5, 2007 19:53