Strictly-Orthodox schools feel “victimised” by Ofsted, which they believe is adopting an unnecessarily harsh approach towards them, representatives of the Charedi community have told the JC.

For several years there have been tensions between the education authorities and Charedi institutions over the requirement to teach some LGBT content in order to comply with the Independent School Standards (ISS) and the new relationships and sex education curriculum (RSE).

But a number of recent inspections have led to growing concerns that Ofsted has in some cases been going beyond official guidelines.

One person familiar with the Strictly-Orthodox education sector said: “Schools feel victimised that even when they have successful outcomes in Ofsted inspections, they continue to be harassed by repeated and unnecessary inspections incurring significant costs, strain on leadership capacity and pressure on school staff and students.”

He added that Charedi schools had proved they were improving their education but “are beginning to wonder what the point is if they continue to be demonised by Ofsted and the actual improvements made and noted by inspectors in education, safeguarding and health and safety practices make no difference to the overall Ofsted grade received by the school”.

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Guarded: Charedi schools generally don’t teach children about sexual orientation (Image: Getty)

A spokesman for the Torah Education Committee, which represents several number of institutions in Stamford Hill, said schools “do feel victimised… Over the past few years we have closely monitored the Ofsted inspections of independent Orthodox schools and have seen how time and again how Ofsted oversteps its remit in judging them, failing or downgrading these schools for matters not on the ISS, and in a highly subjective, even politicised manner.”

Ateres High, an independent girls’ secondary school in Gateshead, has taken the unusual step of making public its complaint against an inspection last year, claiming that an original rating of “good” for the personal development of pupils that had given by the inspectors who visited the school was subsequently downgraded by Ofsted’s Quality Assurance team in head office.

In another episode, Ofsted carried out an inspection of Beis Malka, a Chasidic girls’ school in Salford, which it acknowledged had been commissioned “in error” by the Department for Education.

Ofsted has since agreed to waive the £2,000 inspection fee it initially charged the school.

Concerns have also been raised by comments in the inspection reports of two primary schools, Toras Emes in Salford and Bnei Community Zion School in Stamford Hill.

Primary schools are required to make pupils aware that there are “different types” of families as part of relationships education; that might include single-parent families, for example, but LGBT content is not mandatory at this age.

Although Toras Emes was graded good in three out of four categories, Ofsted said pupils “do not learn about all the characteristics that people may have, such as sexual orientation”.

The report on Bnei Zion says that pupils are not taught about “the legal rights of those with protected characteristics”.

Protected characteristics cover aspects of identity protected in equality law, which include sexual orientation and gender reassignment as well as religion and race.

Charedi educators are also unhappy about the incidence of a number of independent secondary schools that have been judged good in most aspects but nevertheless given a lower “requires improvement” grade mainly because they do not address LGBT issues on religious grounds.

Such schools include Beis Ruchel in Salford and Tiferes High in Hendon — both girls’ schools — and the Gateshead Jewish Boarding School for boys.

If a school is graded as “requires improvement”, it may be forced to produce an action plan on how it proposes to remedy the identified failing, and face the threat of additional inspections or even enforcement action such as a bar on admitting new pupils.

The Department for Education has stated that enforcement action would not normally occur if “only one or two” requirements from the Independent School Standards were unmet, but added it would take the severity of the breach into account.

Samuel Rosenthal, deputy head of Ateres, said: “The current Ofsted rulebook dictates that you can have a school which is outstanding in virtually all areas, and yet is ranked ‘requires improvement’ in its judgment because it is deemed to have one minor area of weakness. Whereas a school that has mediocre outcomes in all areas will be ranked as good. This is an anathema for anyone involved in education.”

The inspectorate’s approach to RSE was “highly inflexible and intransigent”, he said.

It is not only within the Charedi community that questions are being asked. Raisel Freedman, assistant director of the cross-communal Partnerships for Jewish Schools (Pajes), said it had raised with Ofsted its concerns that “there are occasions where Ofsted appears not to be following its own guidance for inspections”.

PaJeS had also been made aware of multiple schools “surprised” at the difference between the feedback given by visiting inspectors and verdicts later given in the official report.

She wondered whether the inspectorate had needed to rush to meet its deadline to inspect all independent schools by last December (delayed a year because of Covid), resulting in “less experienced inspectors” visiting schools who struggled to grasp their religious ethos.

But the inspectorate has defended its record and practice. An Ofsted spokeswoman said: “We inspect all schools in the same way regardless of faith or any other factor.

“We also ensure that our inspectors are properly trained and that enough time is given to inspection activity.”

An independent primary school, she explained, would “not automatically be judged to fail the relevant standards if it does not teach about LGBT relationships.

“However, we will need to be satisfied that the school has fulfilled its requirement, set by the Department for Education, to make pupils aware of protected characteristics in an age-appropriate way.

“If it cannot do this then it is likely we will judge that the school has failed to meet the relevant standards.”

No inspection judgment, she added was “final until a school’s report is published on our website and we make this clear in discussions with school leaders.

“We inspect all schools as we find them and make appropriate judgments based on the evidence presented to us.”