The official tasked with scrutinising the safeguarding of children
by public bodies in Hackney has revealed that a systemic culture of
resistance is preventing authorities from regulating numerous
yeshivas in the London borough. The Independent Child Safeguarding
Commissioner of the City of London and Hackney Safeguarding
Children Partnership, Jim Gamble, offered his comments on Tuesday
during a public hearing of The Independent Inquiry into Child
Sexual Abuse. Hackney is the local...Request free trial
The official tasked with scrutinising the safeguarding of
children by public bodies in Hackney has revealed that a systemic
culture of resistance is preventing authorities from regulating
numerous yeshivas in the London borough.
The Independent Child Safeguarding Commissioner of the City of
London and Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership, Jim Gamble,
offered his comments
on Tuesday during a public hearing of The Independent Inquiry
into Child Sexual Abuse.
Hackney is the local authority suspected to have the largest
number of local children attending unregistered schools, with most
being yeshivas, which are Jewish educational institutions that
focus on the study of traditional religious texts. All schools are
required to register with the Department for Education, but some do
not. These illegally unregistered schools are often found to
provide a substandard curriculum and to flout basic health and
safety regulations. Many have been discovered to be faith
based and to promote a religiously obscurantist agenda.
During the hearing Mr Gamble spoke of his seven year-long
attempts to “ engage yeshivas, which is like playing
Whack-a-Mole when you're trying to engage in a way with locations
that will move simply to avoid engagement”. He went on
to explain that “ the unregistered education settings
that we engage with have a very, very, very narrow curriculum.
Those who support and deliver within that environment do not want
to expand it in the way that the Department for Education and,
indeed, Ofsted expect them to do”.
The commissioner also revealed that he has encountered
resistance from religious authorities and that requiring pupils to
be taught a broader curriculum, beyond religious teaching, was the
greatest point of contention. He later observed:
“ I have engaged directly with the Union of the Orthodox
Hebrew Congregations, and with individuals within it, and we seem
to make a limited degree of progress and then come to a stalemate
position, to the point whereby the frustration for the
safeguarding partners is that no matter how hard we work to
reassure, to listen to the cultural concerns, to adapt, even to
the point of saying, ‘Look, from our point of view, let's
separate the safeguarding issues, the primary safeguarding issue,
from the curriculum-based issues’, to be met in the final
correspondence with feedback that, if we could just get the
Department for Education to negate the curriculum requirement,
then those people that we have been negotiating with would meet
our requirements around safeguarding.”
In recent years Ofsted has regularly complained about a lack
of appropriate powers to regulate unregistered schools,
accusing
some of the education outlets of playing ‘cat and mouse’ with
inspectors and operating ‘on the cusp of the law’ to escape
scrutiny. Back in March 2018 the Government issued an integration
strategy Green
Paper that stated it would review Ofsted’s powers in
relation to unregistered schools. In February this year the
Government committed to introducing
legislation at the ‘next opportunity’ to boost the powers of
inspectors so they can more effectively monitor for and help shut
down illegally unregistered schools, but further details are still
to be revealed.
President of the Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education,
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said “Various public bodies and officials
keep repeating the same message that their attempts to look after
pupils are being thwarted because of the way many unregistered
schools are deliberately flouting the law to escape scrutiny. The
granting of proportionate powers to school inspectors, to ensure
that all school pupils are being educated in a safe setting and for
life in a religiously diverse world, is long overdue. We urge the
Government to bring forward proposals to facilitate more thorough
and effective regulation of unregistered schools as a matter of
urgency.”
Notes
Contact details
For further comment, please contact Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain
on 07770 722 893 or at rabromain@aol.com.
For further information on the topics addressed in this press
release Accord Coalition's National Coordinator, Paul Pettinger,
may be contacted at paul@accordcoalition.org.uk
or on 020 7324 3071.
About Accord
The Accord Coalition was launched in 2008 and brings together
religious and non-religious organisations who want state funded
schools to be made open and suitable to all, regardless of people
or their family's religious or non-religious beliefs. It campaigns
to end religious discrimination in school staffing and admissions,
and for all state funded schools to provide PSHE, along with
assemblies and Religious Education, that boost mutual understanding
between those of different beliefs and backgrounds. http://accordcoalition.org.uk/
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