Heather Bellamy spoke with Simon Calvert from The Christian Institute about the new guidelines, schools being down-graded and children being asked intrusive questions by Ofsted inspectors.

Simon Calvert

Guidelines introduced by the education secretary Nicky Morgan last year require schools to actively promote British values, including democracy, liberty and tolerance. Following this, there have been a number of Christian and Jewish schools complaining to Ofsted of hostile and suspicious inspectors who seem to want to discredit the schools. To find out more, Heather Bellamy spoke with Simon Calvert, the Deputy Director for Public Affairs at The Christian Institute.

Heather: What are these guidelines and why have they been introduced?

Simon: The Government's brought in laws that define what the Government means by British values. They require schools to actively promote these and they're the laws that Ofsted inspect schools against.

When they brought in these laws we pointed out that they were drafted in such a broad and vague way that they could be used very subjectively and that they could be used to try and undermine the ethos of Christian schools. Very shortly after coming into force, cases started to emerge where that was exactly what was happening. There was a lot of media coverage of this and so under pressure, the Government brought in new guidance that said, 'these new rules don't mean that you have to promote alternative lifestyles that promote things like same-sex marriage, they just require schools to promote respect for people'. Of course Christians are very happy to promote respect for people and I think that we can say that Christians have long been at the forefront of promoting the dignity of all people.

That guidance was an improvement on the laws that they'd passed, but the problem is that Ofsted don't seem to have got the message. What we're hearing is of Ofsted inspectors going into some Christian schools and asking questions that are really very hostile. Not all Ofsted inspection teams are doing this, we hear of the stories where the teams are very sensible, but some teams are going in and they are saying to schools, why are you not getting non-Christian faith leaders in to lead collective worship in school assemblies? To which the answer is, because we're a Christian school and we're obliged to promote the Christian faith, and celebrating a non-Christian religious festival would be profoundly wrong to us. The law protects the ability of a Christian school to have Christian-only collective worship, but the Ofsted inspectors seem, sometimes, oblivious to this.

They're also asking other very hostile questions about the Christian ethos of schools - in one recent case that is in the news, sixth formers who were themselves questioned by Ofsted inspectors wrote their own separate reports - all of which gave the clear impression that they felt the Ofsted inspectors were on the hunt, looking for some way of discrediting this Christian school. This was Grindon Hall Christian School in Sunderland. All of these sixth formers independently felt that the inspectors were trying to get them to give answers that made the school look bad, like some sort of hotbed of religious radicalism; that's very serious. So this is the problem that the new rules have generated and even with the new guidance that doesn't seem to have reigned in Ofsted.

Heather: And people are complaining to Ofsted. What has Ofsted's response been to the complaints they've received?

Simon: I've not yet seen any response from Ofsted that's satisfactory. I have seen one senior Ofsted figure use the phrase that, 'Christian schools, Church schools, religious schools are gonna find themselves caught between the rock of their faith and the hard place of the law'. That seems to me another way of saying, 'tough luck'. Of course, in other cases, Ofsted will say that they don't require schools to promote faiths other than their own. But, they may say that and it's a relief to hear them say it, but at the end of the day, inspectors on the ground are not complying with that. Inspectors on the ground are, in several documented cases asking schools and asking pupils whether they celebrate non-Christian religious festivals. They don't seem to have any respect for the fact that these are Christian schools and that that would be quite wrong for them. They seem to suggest that by not celebrating actively non-Christian religious festivals, that they are being narrow and that they are not preparing the young people for life in 'modern Britain' - that's a catchphrase; not preparing them for life in 'modern Britain'.

I think Christians ought to be concerned if their government thinks that being Christian means you're not prepared for life in 'modern Britain'. I think that it's actually pretty good preparation for life in 'modern Britain' and 'modern any country'. I think being a Christian is a very positive thing - it's the best thing in the world. It concerns me and it ought to concern Christians that there are people within Ofsted who seem to take this view that having a clear Christian world-view is somehow inherently negative or limiting.

Heather: Some of these schools have been downgraded by Ofsted because of these guidelines, but two thirds of the nation's best performing primary schools have a religious ethos. What are your thoughts on that in terms of a school could be doing well, but yet they are downgraded simply because of these guidelines?

Simon: Yes, it's serious. I could give examples - there is a very high-performing Roman Catholic school in the East of England that was the best school in the country last year for placing children at Oxbridge Universities and yet it was downgraded by Ofsted. One of the things Ofsted said in their initial report was that they were failing to do enough to tackle radicalisation. This is a Catholic school with Catholic pupils, if they think that Catholics are being radicalised into violence they're about 500 years out of date and it does seem rather bizarre.

The Department of Education has created the problem. There were already British values, rules on the statute book, against which schools were inspected and as far as we can tell they didn't create any problems. But by tinkering with those as it did last year, by upgrading those, inserting more references to the Equality Act, and upsetting the balance of those regulations, the Government has created this problem.

Some Ofsted inspection teams seem to have taken this as a mandate for them to go into schools to promote multiculturalism and secularism. This is part of the problem, that there are some people in Britain today that think secularism is the answer. It's not being secular, we could have a big theological debate about that; plenty of things are secular and not sinful, but secularism is a worldview that excludes religion and multiculturalism is a worldview that mushes together all the faiths. Neither secularism nor multiculturalism are really the answer and they're certainly not neutral. What we need is a proper sense of diversity; a proper idea of creating this basis where people are allowed to have different views. As long as those views aren't harmful, and it's very easy to define what that is, then schools can clearly promote those views.

It used to be that virtually the only form of education was Christian education and for a very long time most parents and most people in public life had a high view of the sort of education you get in a Christian school. But it's just in recent years that, with the advent of militant atheism and active campaigning by groups like The British Humanist Association that there seems to be a much more sceptical and even hostile attitude towards education. I think that there's a need first of all, for Christian parents to make clear to politicians and anyone else who will listen that they expect to be able to have their kids educated in accordance with their Christian beliefs; that they want the State and the State schools to respect their Christian beliefs. I think there's a place for Christian teachers and Christian educationists to go and make the positive case for Christian education. It's a great thing. It's had a hugely beneficial influence on the life of this nation over a very long time and the idea that somehow a Christian school, an evangelical Christian school is somehow equivalent to some sort of Trojan horse scandal like they had in Birmingham; that it's somehow equivalent to some sort of Madrassa where kids are being radicalised is such a huge insult. Especially given that if you look around the world today, the one people group that is probably most likely to be targeted with violence by Islamic extremists is Christians. Christians themselves are victims of Islamic extremism so to try and portray Christians running schools as if they are somehow tantamount to those same extremists is really the worst kind of insult.