MANY PARENTS who picked up their children from Park View School, Birmingham on June 9 took home something else too: an official report excoriating the school. Ofsted, England’s schools inspector, had downgraded the largely Muslim institution to “inadequate”, saying it has failed to protect children from extremism.

A few months ago, Birmingham City Council received a letter purporting to advise Muslim militants how to take over a state school. The letter might be a hoax, but it struck some as painfully accurate. Stories appeared of staff pushed out by hard-line governors (elected amateurs who appoint head teachers and set schools’ strategic direction). As the row grew, the government ordered snap inspections of 21 schools, some of whose findings are damning. But British Muslims — many of whom are Pakistani — have damned the government.

Ofsted and the Education Funding Agency, which oversees quasi-independent state ‘academies’ like Park View, found much that was objectionable. Inspectors turned up examples of schools refusing to teach about sex, teaching only Islam in religion classes while telling the few pupils studying Christianity to do their own research, and inviting an extremist preacher to address an assembly. Loudspeakers are said to have broadcast the call to prayer across Park View’s playground. One of the schools banned raffles and tombolas at a fete on the ground that they are un-Islamic. None of the schools inspected is supposed to be a religious school.

The government, after some internal wrangling about who had overlooked extremism has responded forcefully. Academies found inadequate will lose their funding. Ofsted may be allowed to inspect schools without giving notice: at present it normally warns them a day or two in advance. From September, all schools will be required to promote British values such as freedom, tolerance and the rule of law (at present they must merely respect them). Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, has called for mandatory training for governors. More schools are hurriedly being inspected.

The trouble is many Muslims in Birmingham and beyond, trust neither the inspectors’ reports nor the government. When last inspected, some of these schools were judged outstanding, which suggests to some that inspectors went back into them with an agenda. The Park View academy chain has staged a vigorous defence, in which non-Muslims are prominent. Conspiracy theories abound. “People can’t tolerate a school in Alum Rock with Asian kids doing better than grammar schools,” suggests a young man who left Park View two years ago.

Ofsted is certainly muddling the distinction between religious conservatism and the kind of extremism that feeds violence. Inspectors criticise schools for failing to raise pupils’ awareness of extremism and for engaging insufficiently with the ‘Prevent’ programme, which is part of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy. Such criticisms call forth the spectre of terrorism to condemn behaviour that is no such thing. That is both misplaced and strategically unwise. The more things the state describes as extremist, the more it risks angering many ordinary Muslims and turning them against it.

(Excerpted and adapted from )