Sheffield’s Sorry School Saga
Civitas, 10 February 2009
The recently appointed head of a primary school in Sheffield has just tendered her resignation after unsuccessfully seeking to end the separate weekly assemblies for its thirty odd Muslim pupils she found on arrival being organised there. She sought to end them in the belief they were divisive. Instead, her attempt to do so raised a firestorm of protests from angry Muslim parents who accused her of racism.
I am absolutely sure that no iota of racism lay behind the head’s attempt to end the separate assemblies. Yet, at the same time, I think the manner in which she set about ending them was ill-judged and heavy-handed. Reportedly, Muslim parents of pupils there only started to object after hymn-singing had been introduced into the whole-school assemblies that had replaced the separate Muslim ones.
It seems to me adherents of a faith are perfectly entitled to object to their children being expected by their schools to attend religious ceremonies of a faith other than their own.
What I find so bizarre about this case is that, prior to the arrival of the new head, successive Ofsted reports (of inspections conducted in 1998 and 2005) had consistently commented on just how harmonious and cohesive the school was. This is presumably in spite of these separate assemblies which, in any case, only took place weekly on days when 20 minutes were devoted at the main assemblies to hymn-singing.
While, as I say, I am sure the head’s attempt to end the separate assemblies was well-intentioned and anything but racist, it does display a certain insensitivity not to have realised just how alert religious groups are, especially minorities, at any perceived attempt to wean their children from their faith, especially those made by the authorities.
Community cohesion is not the same as, nor does it demand, religious uniformity. It is a shame that an attempt to promote it has back-fired in such a spectacular and with such tragic costs having exacted as the price of its failure the resignation of someone who seems to have been in all other ways a talented, dedicated and popular head.
Nonetheless, if any lessons are to be drawn from this sorry saga, one surely is that it does not do well to try and fix what ain’t broken. Another is that, if community cohesion is not to become just a code-word for the covert secularisation of schooling, there is need for the local education authorities to come to terms with religious diversity in ways more judicious than by merely attempting to impose religious uniformity on schools.
While I would be the first to agree that DES circulars can sometimes be overly-‘creative’ in their interpretations of statutes, I do not think that Circular No3/89 from which I quoted falls into that category.
My basic point was simply that, under the present law, community schools may provide suitable separate religious assemblies for children from a non-Christian faith background when their parents have withdrawn them from assemblies which are mainly Christian in character, which parents have long enjoyed the legal right to do.
Such non-Christian assemblies had already long been operating for the children of these Muslim pupils at the Sheffield school when the head who has just resigned from it took up her appointment.
She sought to change the status quo in defiance of parental wishes.
The head knew that was not compelled under the 1988 Act to end the separate assemblies, and the suggestion that they militated against community cohesion cannot, in my view, be sustained, given how harmonioius and cohesive Ofsted had previously reported the school to be when those separate assemblies had long been in operation, something that Ofsted noted with approval in its 2005 report on the school.
Rather than promoting cohesion, in ending those assemblies in the manner she did, the head reduced it. That was why, in my view, her stopping was ill-judged.
It was legally and socially unnecessary and could have been expected to have arouse antagonism and division in what had previously been a seemingly harmonious and cohesive school.
I personally deeply regret the fact that the head has felt obliged to resign, but relations between her and the Muslim parents of pupils may have become too embittered to have permitted her to feel she could continue. That is a deep pity.
All that trouble, however, could have been avoided had the head not felt compelled to end the weekly separate assemblies for the small minority of Muslim children whose parents objected to their attending assemblies of a mainly Christian character. It simply wasn’t demanded by the law.
Is a Departmental Circular giving guidance an alternative to the law?
I do not believe Mr Knott is entirely correct in what he states is the present law concerning religious assemblies in maintained schools in England and Wales.
The following is what is said about religious assemblies in Circular No. 3/89 issued by the Department of Education and Science in January 1989. It was issued to all Heads and Governing Bodies of Maintained Schools in England and Wales in clarification of what the 1988 Education Reform Act prescribed about religious education and collective worship.
A section of the Circular is entitled ‘Nature of collective worship in country schools’. Here the following is stated:
34. For county schools, the Act says that the collective worship organised by the school is to be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character… It is not necessary for every act of worship to be of this character, but within each school term, the majority of acts must be so.
35. How collective worship is organised is for the head teacher to decide after consultation with the governing body, having regard to… [among other] considerations relating to the pupils concerned… any relevant circumstances relating to their family backgrounds, for example the faith of their family.
The next section of the Circular is entitled: ‘Applications to SACREs regarding alternative collective worship’. Its opening paragraph was written in clarification of section 12 of the 1988 Act and runs:
36. If the head teacher of a county school considers that the requirements for collective worship described in paragraph 34 could conflict with what is required by paragraph 25, he or she can apply to the local SACRE to lift or modify the requirements in para. 34. The head teacher’s application does not need to apply to the whole school. It can be limited to any class or description of pupils at the school, and might relate for example to a particular group… in the school in which many pupils are of a particular faith or religion. The purpose of this procedure is to allow for acts of collective worship according to a faith or religion other than Christianity where for some or all pupils in a school the requirement that worship should be of a broadly Christian character is inappropriate. One factor which may inform a head teacher’s decision to make an application to the SACRE is the extent of withdrawals from Christian collective worship.
I am unaware that the law on this matter has been changed since the 1988 Education Reform Act was passed.
Assuming I am right that it hasn’t, what clearly emerges from the Circular from which I have just quoted is that the law as it currently stands does not compel community schools to hold only whole-school religious assemblies that are of a broadly Christian character.
Where, as in the case in hand, there is a substantial minority of pupils at a school whose parents adhere to some faith other than Christianity and who have elected to withdraw their children from its broadly Christian assemblies, it lies within the power of a school head to apply for that school to be allowed to hold separate religious assemblies just for that minority of pupils whose parents are of that other faith.
Therefore, contrary to what Mr Knott states in his comment, it would appear that, in having sought to end the separate weekly religious assemblies for its Muslim pupils that she found at the Sheffield primary school to which she had just been appointed, the head of it who has just resigned because of the objections from Muslim parents to her decision was not just acting in the only way in which the law permitted her to act.
She had far more wiggle room at her disposal. Indeed, she was under no statutory obligation to end the separate assemblies at all.
The law in England and Wales states that children at state schools “shall on each school day take part in an act of collective worship”, which should be “wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character”. The head teacher is responsible for collective worship provision, in consultation with the governors.
She was forced to resign for trying to uphold the law?