Yesterday Ofsted published reports on 21 schools in Birmingham. All have been accused of something or other, though at times during the last few months it has not always been clear what, where, when or by whom.
Some things have actually happened. Skimming the Ofsted reports, these things range from serious financial mismanagement, to governors significantly overstepping their roles in pursuit of a “narrow, faith-based ideology”, to no effective sex and relationships education, to pupils not being aware of how to protect themselves online. In spite of effective academic performance, five have been placed in special measures because of leadership and governance failures. Funding arrangements with the Park View Educational Trust look set to be terminated, which in practice means that schools hitherto operated by them will be handed to another provider.
At some point in this saga, the language of ‘religious extremism’ started to get thrown around, without anyone being very clear what they were attaching that description to. This had the effect of 1) muddying the water as to what exactly was the scope, purpose and nature of the multiple investigations, 2) setting Muslim parents and governors to wondering if taking a stake in their local schools puts them in the same category as Abu Hamza, and 3) ratcheting the episode up into an interdepartmental/ministerial spat on the right approach to Muslim extremism in general, on which Michael Gove has firm views, but Teresa May has the brief.
Ofsted found no evidence of extremist ideology being taught, only that children were not properly protected from it (most notoriously, with a failure to vet visiting speakers). Is it therefore ‘extremist’ for Muslim parents to want schools that reflect their values, or that Muslim governors would seek to shape community schools with a Muslim ethos? That latter claim would make more sense but, even so, extremism seems too strong a word. The language of ‘non-violent extremism’ has been wheeled in to do the work. This seems like a convenient way of saying “stuff we don’t like happening but that isn’t immediately hurting anyone and isn’t against the law”.
Anyway, here are those thoughts:
First, it’s paradoxically predictable yet surprising that some - like Dan Hodges of the Telegraph - are using the issue as a lever in the faith school debate, in spite of the fact that none of the 21 schools under scrutiny are faith schools.
All faith schools are Trojan Horse schools. We should ban the lot of them > Telegraph > http://t.co/kkXNrpOxKL
— Dan Hodges (@DPJHodges) June 10, 2014
Predictable because opposition to faith schools – just like support for faith schools – is both evidential and ideological. Surprising because of the sheer cheekiness of arguing that whatever capture has occurred has occurred because we have some schools that are run by religious institutions according to a religious ethos. To the extent that the Birmingham situation demands a debate about faith, it’s a debate around faith in schools, not faith schools.
Second, there has been a complete failure to properly coordinate a response. No-one wants to be left carrying the can, and so individuals and agencies have been briefing, leaking and criticising each other. Questions are nevertheless raised against them all – Ofsted (for recent positive reports on some of the schools), the Department of Education (for not acting sooner) and the Education Funding Agency (criticised by a Public Accounts Committee report today). A further investigation led by Peter Clarke – a counter-terrorism expert – is yet to come, and will advise whether the schools were victims of individual failures of governance or a coordinated plot. Who knows where investigations from West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council have got to. If the parents of children in those schools have little confidence in the independence or objectivity of the various investigations, it’s hardly a surprise.
Third, little attention is being given to (albeit boring and wonkish) issues of structure and oversight of schools. It’s far sexier to create a legal duty for schools to promote British values than it is to find the right structure to balance distinctiveness, local leadership and community involvement with national educational priorities. The academy system has clear weaknesses in this respect, which is not to say that the old order was always effective. Is it not the case that the Park View Trust academies ‘succeeded’ in doing what academies are supposed to do – that is, to provide a high standard of academic education with a distinctive ethos and approach free from local authority control? If you’re going to adopt that approach you might find that occasionally schools become a bit too distinctive, or fail in other respects. The question is, how much failure can there be before the policy is seen as a mistake overall.
Fourth, there will now be much loose talk about the importance of a liberal, secular education or indeed of British values, whatever any of those are. It’s be tempting to wade in and give a view, and there’s no denying that some things have gone on which jar with humanist – Christian humanist or atheist humanist – visions of a good education. Either we go on in the principled view that within a broad framework many multicultural flowers should bloom in our educational system and look for the kind of oversight and governance which will mitigate problems like those we’ve seen in Birmingham, or we look for uniformity – but then we must answer the question, what kind of uniformity? Once you try and define British or liberal values you’ll end up with either a tasteless soup of generally good things, or something more sinister – an authoritarian, possibly nationalist, probably secular credo – no thanks.
Fifth, it’s worth saying, by the way, that some schools that have been inspected as part of this process have emerged rather well – you won’t hear much about those, though.
Paul Bickley
Image by mjuhah from flickr.com under the Creative Commons Licence
