School inspectors have come under fire from the Bishop of Shrewsbury this week, in an escalation of the Church’s row with the Government’s education regulator, Ofsted.
In a homily during the annual Mass for Marriage and Family Life at St Columba’s Church, Chester, on Saturday, Bishop Mark Davies described reports of Ofsted inspectors questioning young children over their understanding of marriage and the family as “horror stories”.
He said that marriage was becoming increasingly “unmentionable”, with politicians often reluctant to say the word and teachers increasingly too scared to propose marriage as a model of life to pupils.
“We have even heard horror stories of inspectors in schools questioning very young children as to whether they have been taught ‘narrow’ understandings of the family,” said the bishop. “The Church may well find herself amongst the last voices in society whole-heartedly speaking for the family based on the strong foundation of the lasting, life-giving, faithful union of one man and one woman.”
His comments follow publication of a letter on the website of The Tablet last week from Edmund Adamus, the Diocese of Westminster’s director for marriage and family life, accusing Ofsted inspectors of “emotionally traumatising” children with “invasive questions about their appreciation of homosexual lifestyle and practice”.
Last December the Catholic Education Service demanded an apology from Ofsted after it downgraded St Benedict’s Catholic School in Bury St Edmonds, Suffolk, from “good” to “requires improvement” for failing to promote British values. The CES accused Ofsted of making an “unsubstantiated” claim of extremism against the school after a snap inspection report suggested that younger pupils “show less awareness of the dangers of extremism and radicalisation” and questioned whether the school prepared pupils “for life and work in modern Britain”.
However, last month St Benedict’s was listed as the top state comprehensive school in England and Wales in the Government’s School Performance League Tables.
The Ofsted checks were introduced in the wake of the so-called “Trojan Horse” plot to impose hard-line Muslim values on some state schools in Birmingham. The schools were told to place fundamental British, including mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs, values at the heart of the timetable.
In his homily Bishop Davies told the congregation that they would be justified to expect candidates in this May’s general election to offer a “moral lead” in defence of marriage. He said: “Politicians speak of ‘new forms of family’ but often seem afraid to speak of marriage itself. In classrooms teachers, rightly sensitive to the home backgrounds of the children they teach, have often become less ready to propose the model of marriage.
“In past decades, Marxists and feminists railed against the institution of marriage as an oppressive structure hindering the march of progress. Today, we know a quieter intimidation urging us to be silent about the immense and necessary good which marriage represents.
“We speak from both faith and reason when we urge those to be elected to the new Parliament to support marriage against the increasing scale of the breakdown of families which we have witnessed in the past three decades.
“Politicians have told me that their electors don’t look to them for sermons. I am sure we don’t expect sermons on morality from our elected representatives but we do expect a moral lead when a great, social good is at stake.”
Loading ...
