Tell me, people, is THIS not just a whole new world of outrageous?
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
All schools are (or were) supposed to be inspected, not directed or controlled, by Ofsted to make sure they are fulfilling basic requirements, I think that is a reasonable role for the state to play. It’s even more reasonable in schools that have their own religious or otherwise agenda as separate inspections allow a danger of making it acceptable for some bodies to be accountable to different rules and standards - it should not be acceptable, for example, for a school to teach religious beliefs as scientific truth, and this has to be checked. Trust the Telegraph to unduly emphasise the relevance of Islam though.
On a related note, I was going to post this anyway but it’s relevant to the topic; Rowan Williams has been offering some even more outrageous suggestions today. It makes me feel slightly uncomfortable to agree with Gordon Brown so completely but a formal recognition of any religious rule set is an awful notion; there must be one law. He had seemed a relatively reasonable Archbishop in the past but this is madness.
By the way, Vickie, if you ever happen to be talking about the British school system again, it might be worth noting that public schools actually, somewhat paradoxically, would mean private schools in our lexicon. Don’t ask me why.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
There is a reason to more greatly implicate Islam: first, it is Muslim schools that have asked for this, not all faith schools. Secondly, it is amongst Muslim (mainly Pakistani) communities that integration is most noticeably failing. Look at the link I have below (or look at it here.
To qualify that Pakistani comment: it is found in Britain that unlike the expected result - that third generation Pakistanis would be fully integrated - they are poorly so and so are their children. This comes from two things. The first is that often they go to schools with almost entirely Pakistani attendants and besides this, interact only with members of the extended family outside of school. Secondly, typically in these areas a British Pakistani will marry an immigrant who does not speak English and has no concept of British life and in doing so will prevent inter-marriage etc. and all these things that are supposed to be halting the segregation.
Vickie - all schools of all kind are subjected to inspections designed to ensure that they meet the minimum legal standards required for them to be considered to provide the legally obliged minimum education. Have a look at the bottom of this.
There was a school in the UK a couple of years ago that was found to be directly teaching fundamentalism and recruiting terrorists. Imagine without inspections! Hardly related, this is interesting.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,590352,00.html
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
Sorry to hoist you from your own petard but, from the Telegraph article, “The Association of Muslim Schools and the Christian Schools’ Trust applied to the Government to set up a separate inspectorate for a small number of private faith schools.” The first BBC link you included says that “there were 50 Muslim schools and 40 Christian schools - eight Evangelical and most Christian Brethren - in the transitional phase of reaching acceptable educational standards.” Both Islamic and Christian schools are potential problem areas and both have asked for the similar independence.
Cultural integration of people of Pakistani descent or those from other traditionally Muslim countries is a relevant issue but I don’t think it is terribly significant in regard to the specific possibility of separate inspectors for certain schools when we’re not dealing only with Muslim schools here.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
In which case I should clarify: I don’t think any faith schools should be allowed this special allowance.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
I don’t so much object to separate inspectors as to the implication of separate criteria to be inspected upon. “We dropped science, now see how many verses of their religious material they can recite!” etc… Additionally I don’t think government funded faith schools should be allowed at all - they just incubate segregation and sectarianism in divided communities.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
It ain’t over here: here all children must have at least a minimum level of schooling as far as I’m aware and it must be proven to be provided.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
To put it quite simply, if the schools are not recieving government funds, they should not be subject to government criteria, including inspections (aside from say a building inspection, which has nothing to do with educational content).
*If you accept that there is an obligationto provide quality education, that does not mean that X institution must necesarily provide it (though, as a school, one should expect that they should). Further, such an obligation would not establish the state as the arbiter of educational quality.
At the same time, private schools stand to lose a lot if they don’t educate their students up to (or above) the standards of government-funded schools. Just because someone graduates some Muslim or Christian school doesn’t mean an employer or a university has to recognize that “achievement.”
This is where accreditation comes in. In the U.S., it’s voluntary and it acts as a quality control measure, as universities will recognize diplomas earned through accredited programs more easily than they would diplomas earned through non-accredited programs. There’s an inspection process which involves a quality review team and certain standards that must be met and whatnot.
The key thing is that the same accrediting bodies do accreditation for public and private schools alike and a lot of the standards are the same. A school can have a faith-based curriculum and ignore the state’s standard course of study, but it would still have to have adequate facilities and be dedicated to continual improvement and all the other things they look for.
In deference to Nemo’s point, there would be something fundamentally fishy about religious bodies providing accreditation for ^religious schools based on a completely different set of standards while expecting universities to accept that accreditation the same as they would otherwise.
*This being a statement of principle. The law in the UK may say otherwise for all I know.
^Higher education is a different issue with different circumstances.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
My stance is that there is a legal minimum educational requirement and for a school to count as fulfilling that it must show that it does. This is achieved through inspection. If a school wishes not to be inspected that’s fine, it should just be that those pupils attending do not count as having gone to school in the required sense. The upshot of this is that these pupils will either be in breach of the law in attending such schools, or will have to procure other education alongside that which they there receive.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
For a bit of clarity, parents can home school their kids and groups can set up their own schools but they are still subject to inspection and monitoring, in theory at least. I don’t really know how your accreditation works but here there is a certain set of recognised qualifications that all schools are meant to teach to and how effective they are at doing that is basically what inspectors judge.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
Accreditation in the U.S. would not apply to homeschooling, but in case anyone’s curious, here’s a sample of the criteria that would have to be met for one of the accrediting bodies:
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
That really depends on the type of Homeschool and the state that it’s in, but there are not currently national standards on the subject, that is correct.
Why on Earth should this be allowed?
Whereas there are over here hence they ought to be upheld by everyone.