Religious studies
Giving schools more autonomy and encouraging religious groups to run them will produce the occasional disaster
IT IS known as the Trojan Horse plot, but it may have been less subtle. Late in 2013 an anonymous letter was uncovered, outlining a hardline Muslim plan to “overthrow” teachers and governors in several Birmingham state schools and replace them with people who would run the schools on orthodox Islamic lines. The furore has grown, eventually involving Peter Clarke, once the head of counter-terrorism in London’s Metropolitan Police, who will lead a government investigation.
The letter may be a fake, but something has certainly gone wrong in Birmingham’s schools. Leaked reports about several academies (schools that are state-funded but independently run) by Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, suggest that in some classrooms boys and girls are seated apart, that sex education is ignored and the theory of evolution dismissed. Ofsted is investigating 25 schools in the city. This is more than a local problem, because it hints at flaws in England’s otherwise rather commendable education reforms. What has gone wrong in Birmingham is related to what has gone right elsewhere.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Religious studies"
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