The Accord Coalition has urged the Government to revise the inspection framework for state funded schools following comments this week from the Prime Minister, David Cameron, that he wants all state maintained schools in England to ‘aspire’ to become an academy school. Academy schools are directly funded by central, rather than local government, and are free from a range of regulations that maintained schools must abide by, including the National Curriculum.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘The school system is fragmented by religion and lacking in safeguards, as has been recently demonstrated by the Birmingham schools scandal, which were all community schools, and the closure so far of three free schools, all of which were faith schools. There remains a serious risk from schools following narrow and exclusive agendas that government needs to be more alert to.
‘As a matter of urgency, all schools should again be inspected by Ofsted upon promoting better community cohesion, inspection of which was recently dropped, but should be restored. Meanwhile, the conflict of interest whereby faith schools choose who inspects their provision of RE and assemblies should be brought to end, and instead all state funded schools should face the same inspection regime in these areas.
‘Last month the Prime Minister highlighted in a set speech the negative impact on community cohesion from ethnic segregation in the school system. Awareness of the risks from segregating children in this way is welcome, but will be undone if schools are given greater autonomy to innovate and not checks to ensure new freedoms are not misused.’
Accord’s call follows the publication last month by leading academic, Professor Linda Woodhead, and former Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, in their report ‘A New Settlement: Religion and Belief in Schools‘. Its recommendations included that Ofsted should re-establish ‘a strong inspection system’ to ensure all state funded schools are again inspected on their duty to promote community cohesion. Ofsted previously inspected schools on this measure until the 2012 Education Act removed its duty to do so, a move that Accord vigorously opposed.
