{"id":929,"date":"2007-12-13T14:53:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T14:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2007\/12\/13\/ofsted-report-on-islamia-school\/"},"modified":"2007-12-13T14:53:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T14:53:00","slug":"ofsted-report-on-islamia-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2007\/12\/13\/ofsted-report-on-islamia-school\/","title":{"rendered":"Ofsted report on Islamia school"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">Incidentally, I checked the Ofsted report on Ibrahim&#8217;s school (he is no longer head, it seems).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">Before I get to the school&#8217;s report, what is especially interesting is this:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman\">There are no national statutory requirements for religious education (RE), other than that RE should be provided.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: bold;font-family:times new roman\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">There are <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">non<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">-statutory (i.e. entirely toothless) guidelines, however. They are <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/publications.teachernet.gov.uk\/default.aspx?PageFunction=productdetails&amp;PageMode=publications&amp;ProductId=QCA%2F04%2F1336&amp;\">here<\/a><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">. Very waffly, aren&#8217;t they? What do the require so far as getting children to think critically about their own religion is concerned? Er&#8230; um&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Maintained schools do have to comply with a locally agreed RE syllabus, determined by the Local Education Authority on advice from a Standing Advisory Council on RE (SACRE) which is comprised of  4 groups of people, each group with one vote, comprising representatives from: (i) religious denominations, (ii) the Church of England, (iii) local teaching reps, (iv) the Local Education Authority (notice membership must therefore be at least 50% religious). The syllabus is drawn up with an eye to the non-statutory guidelines.<\/p>\n<p>Independent schools <span style=\"font-style: italic\">can do whatever they like.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Islamia school is independent, it seems.<br \/><\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">So now to the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ofsted.gov.uk\/portal\/site\/Internet\/menuitem.7c7b38b14d870c7bb1890a01637046a0\/?urn=132190&amp;providerCategoryID=16384\">Islamia school&#8217;s Oftsed report<\/a><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">. It says everything is pretty much great. Except right at the end we find this:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">While not required by the regulations, the school might wish to consider the <\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">following points for development:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul style=\"font-style: italic;font-family: times new roman\">\n<li>continue to seek ways of integrating the secular curriculum and Islamic studies <\/li>\n<li>further improve the quality of teaching by sharing good practice and through a rigorous programme of training and development<\/li>\n<li>increase resources for physical education for older pupils  and improve thefacilities for practical science <\/li>\n<li>provide a wider range of opportunities for pupils to increase their knowledge and understanding of the other faiths and cultures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">(Source: Inspection report: Nottingham Islamia School, 9-10 May 2007.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">Note that first and last comment. That&#8217;s it, suggestion-wise. Notice they are pointing up some weaknesses in RE re. the <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">non<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\"><span style=\"font-style: italic\">&#8211;<\/span>statutory guidelines. Legally, the school doesn&#8217;t <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">have<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\"> to provide <span style=\"font-style: italic\">any<\/span> opportunities for pupils to increase their knowledge and understanding of other faiths and cultures. There&#8217;s just the suggestion that it might <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">like<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\"> to provide more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">Nor is there any mention, anywhere, of <\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">an absence of a critical culture<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">. But then how could there be given even the <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">non<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">-statutory guidelines waffle over that issue?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">So, even <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">if<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\"> the <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/nischool.com\/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=view&amp;id=2&amp;Itemid=2\">school<\/a><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\"> were a little indoctrination factory (I don&#8217;t say it is, by the way, but remember Ibrahim&#8217;s approval of &#8220;indoctrination&#8221; and his suggestion that in any good Islamic school &#8220;Islam is a given and never challenged&#8221;), the report could not fault the school for failing to meet even <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-family:times new roman\">non<\/span><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">-statutory guidelines in this respect.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">Not good enough.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:times new roman\">When pressed on the issue of indoctrination, Islamic and other faith schools often respond by pointing to their &#8220;excellent&#8221; Ofsted reports. Unfortunately, on this issue, Ofsted reports provide no guarantees whatsoever, and Ofsted is utterly toothless.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Incidentally, I checked the Ofsted report on Ibrahim&#8217;s school (he is no longer head, it seems). Before I get to the school&#8217;s report, what is especially interesting is this: There are no national statutory requirements for religious education (RE), other than that RE should be provided. There are non-statutory (i.e. entirely toothless) guidelines, however. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith-schools","category-ibrahim-lawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}