The government has said it will push ahead with its plans to give schools’ regulator Ofsted the power to investigate church youth work.
Ministers have announced that they will ‘set out next steps’ for proposals to register and inspect all out-of-school settings which provides instruction to children for more than six to eight hours in any week. This could include church youth groups and one-off events such as holiday Bible clubs.
The government revealed its intention to push ahead in a response to serious concerns from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
In a written response on 19 October, the government said it was considering how best to take the policy forward, highlighting that settings deemed to be failing to promote children’s ‘wellbeing’ will be targeted.
‘British Values’
The government also praised Ofsted’s controversial ‘British values’ inspections, which have targeted young pupils at Christian and other religious schools with intrusive and inappropriate questioning.
Despite this response, the government went on to claim it accepted that: ‘Freedom of worship is a fundamental and hard-fought British liberty that should be defended.’
Fierce criticism
The out-of-school settings plans, which are part of a wider counter-extremism strategy, have provoked fierce criticism from various groups, including MPs. During a parliamentary debate in May this year, Tory backbencher Sir Gerald Howarth said, ’regulating groups such as Sunday schools is clearly absurd.
‘It would place a huge administrative burden on such groups, would severely damage volunteering and would be a serious infringement of personal liberty and freedom of association.’
DUP MP Gavin Robinson warned that introducing such a measure would ‘breach the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitment to reject any sweeping authoritarian measures that would threaten the hard-won freedoms in this country. ‘It would be far too wide and far too shallow, when, in response to extremism, we need a measure that is deep and narrowly focussed’, he said.
