An Ofsted inspection of the Yesodey Hatorah Jewish school which left young girls feeling ‘severely shaken’ after being asked ‘attacking questions about sex’, was slammed by media commentators in March.
The snap inspection – the school was not due to be inspected – appears to have been prompted by headlines in the Guardian which said that the school had removed references to homosexuality from text books. Photographs of the books showed that every reference with sexual content had been deleted.
The inspection prompted the Revd Giles Fraser – an Anglican vicar and former Guardian columnist –to rebuke both Ofsted and the Government.
Giles Fraser said the schools regulator had ‘failed to understand the most basic feature of their own values: respect and toleration’. Writing on the Unherd website, Mr Fraser explained that the Jewish school has values that are distinct from the mainstream secular view, ‘not least when it comes to sex education’. But he said that ‘Ofsted inspectors obviously came with a fixed agenda’.
