U.K. Government Threatens to Shut Down Religious Schools For Not Promoting Tolerance Aggressively Enough

The government body responsible
for school inspections in the U.K. (Ofsted) has warned an
independent Christian school that it risks being downgraded, and
ultimately closed, for failing to meet new “British values”
requirements.

The
new requirements were introduced in June, following a “Trojan
Horse scandal” involving the alleged infiltration of Islamic
extremists in a number of Birmingham schools. The requirements
attempt to combat extremism by promoting “British values” such as
individual liberty, tolerance, and diversity. However, it now
appears they are being used to interfere with the faith-based ethos
of British private schools. From
The Telegraph:

New rules intended to combat extremism are already having
“disturbing consequences” for religious schools and forcing Ofsted
inspectors to act in a way which undermines their ethos…

In the latest case inspectors are understood to have warned the
head that the school, which was previously rated as “good,” that it
would be downgraded to “adequate” for failing to meet standards
requiring it to “actively promote” harmony between different faiths
because it had failed to bring in representatives from other
religions.

They warned that unless the school could demonstrate how it was
going to meet the new requirements there would be a further full
inspection which could ultimately lead to it being closed.

This is not just a problem faced by Christian schools. Again
from The Telegraph:

It follows complaints from orthodox Jewish schools about recent
inspections in which girls from strict traditional backgrounds were
allegedly asked whether they were being taught enough about
lesbianism, whether they had boyfriends and if they knew where
babies came from.

Promoting tolerance and diversity is a noble goal for any
education system. But the top-down imposition of these values by
the British government is a clear infringement on people’s right to
choose how their children are educated. The very existence of a
government body responsible for inspecting and regulating private
schools assumes that bureaucrats should be empowered to overrule
parents, a troubling implication.

As debate ramps up over the Common Core education standards,
Americans should watch closely what can happen when control over
schools is handed over to a centralized authority.