Friday 29 January 2021

Its Not Just One Religion

When you hear of state schools being hijacked by a religion in the UK ....

TTD Gur School in Stamford Hill - Rated Inadequate For Several Years In A Row ...

..... you probably automatically think of those schools where Islamist's have managed to subvert the curriculum of a state school, usually via the school governors board.

This is a national problem, known as trojan horse schools, that I fear is still being swept under the carpet, even though it is a terrible social danger to our society, as it leads to social backwardness (especially from the boys educated in this system) .... But its easy to forget that its not just one group who hold these hard-line views, and in fact ultra orthodox Jews also share many of the same social ideas, especially about the worth and roles of women.

So it is perhaps no great surprise, when a couple of orthodox Jewish schools have made the news in recent times for all the wrong reasons: The Orthodox Jewish Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School, which despite the name is actually a state school, was found by Ofsted to be adopting hard-line practises.

They had, much like the trojan horse schools, removed all references to homosexuality from education department approved books and teaching materials.

Fred And Ginger - Too Risqué For Some Cultures ....

They also censored other pictures, such as of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, as they were classed as men and women socialising, which was deemed inappropriate or 'immodest'. The school claimed that it redacts all the books, to protect girls from sexualisation .... Ofsted were called in to investigate the school.

Of course all state and private schools in the UK have a legal obligation to teach and promote British values - this includes tolerance for those, whose values are different from their own. Unfortunately, too many blind eyes are now turned on matters like this, usually in the name of multiculturalism.

So this wasn't the only example of a Jewish 'Orthodox' school being badly or illegally run ..... which is a little surprising for a religion that generally prizes education. The Jewish TTD Gur School, which was an over-subscribed (its only licensed for 140), Orthodox Jewish boys’ school in Stamford Hill, London, managed to achieve the unenviable record of having not one of its pupils achieving national early learning targets in reading or writing. That has to be something of a record, when you consider other minority groups that don't necessarily prize education as much, are doing better.

The school has 242 boy pupils aged 3 to 11, and none were taught to speak, read or write in English and the children were found by inspectors to“get confused between Yiddish and English,” and that the teachers “do not correct them”. .... presumably this was for 'religious reasons,' although how they were going to support themselves in later life, or even manage in secondary school, is also something of a mystery, but I assume they were going to be sent back in Israel for their later education.

The schools parents refused to let the children even be interviewed by Ofsted inspectors, but using interpreters, inspectors noted that lessons taught in Yiddish failed the boys who “do not learn about the roles of women in wider society,” and do not learn about different sexualities, or gender identities.

TTD Gur was previously rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in 2013, but by 2015, it had been downgraded to ‘inadequate’. Three further inspections – in 2016, 2017 and 2018 – also all rated the school as inadequate, and it was no better in 2019. Why it has dropped its standards so dramatically is not made clear in the reports I read.

But this perhaps is where multiculturalism eventually and inevitably will always end up.

Trojan horse Islamic schools and hard-line Jewish religious schools ... its not a rosy future. Although in this case, Ofsted were advising the Education Secretary about the school’s suitability for continued registration as an independent school, as a significant number of the independent school standards were not met.

Ofsted has recently been given an extra £400,000, to investigate and prosecute dangerous and illegal schools. Gavin Williamson said that they are a "serious risk" for children. While Ofsted chief Amanda Spielman has said that she is committed to exposing unregistered establishments.

Since 2016, Ofsted have had 640 referrals of suspect schools, and 72 had been closed down after illegally operating, and its an ongoing battle to stop education creep.

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