The chief inspector of schools has accused hard-left activists and religious extremists of trying to stop her clampdown on illegal Muslim schools with a campaign of intimidation.
Amanda Spielman revealed that one of Ofsted’s regional offices has been forced to take additional security measures after inspectors were repeatedly sent extreme Islamic literature. She has also been targeted and received one threatening email claiming that hardline Islamists know where she lives, after Ofsted won a court case against an Islamic school that segregated girls from boys.
References to her private home address in London, which could be found online, were subsequently removed as a precaution.
In an interview with The Times, Ms Spielman said that confronting unregistered faith schools, many but not all of them serving poor Muslim communities, had, against her expectations, proved the toughest part of her role as Ofsted’s chief inspector, which she began in January.
Inspectors had found private faith schools where children did not learn English and British values were “meaningless”, she said. She called for a change in the law to require children to be registered if they attend an independent faith school or if they are home schooled.
Ofsted inspectors were so shocked by the aggressive behaviour of staff at one unregistered Islamic school in east London that they reported them to the police. Inspectors were called “Britain First paedophiles” and accused by people working at the school of committing sex acts to get their jobs when they arrived for a visit. The police are now taking action against staff at the school for breach of the peace.
At another independent Muslim school, the head teacher telephoned parents during the Ofsted visit to tell them that inspectors were asking their children if they were gay. He then told the inspectors that furious parents were lining up outside the school and they should think about whether the inspection could proceed.
Two months ago Ofsted won a court case on appeal that allowed it to force Al-Hijrah, an Islamic school in Birmingham, to stop segregating girls and boys on religious grounds. Another 25 mixed faith schools will have to follow suit as a result of the ruling by judges in the appeal court.
Last month Ms Spielman challenged primary schools that allow girls to wear a hijab or similar headscarf, saying this could be seen as sexualising girls as young as five or six, as the practice of girls covering their heads was usually associated with modesty only after the onset of puberty. She said inspectors would ask girls whom they see wearing head scarves in primary schools why they did so.
This week, publishing her first annual report as chief inspector of schools in England, she accused some private ultra-conservative faith schools of consciously resisting British values and the law on equalities.
Ms Spielman revealed that she had been taken aback at the intensity of some of the abuse directed at Ofsted staff and at her personally. “I’m not easily bruised. I don’t fall over when I see a load of nasty tweets pointed at me but there has been some pretty venomous stuff.
“I had an email which was the most threatening one which was along the lines of ‘We know where you live and we can get you any time we want to’.”
She added: “You really notice that the people who say to you privately that you’re doing absolutely the right thing very rarely want to stick their heads above the parapet on the sensitive stuff.
“Muslims and non-Muslims, heads of schools who are saying, ‘Yes, these are real problems’, a lot of people will say that privately but don’t want to stick their necks out,” she said.