Targeting Christian schools

The Government’s new school standards, issued in September this year, insist that all faith schools promote so-called ‘fundamental British values’ in order to prepare them for ‘life in modern Britain’. 

The Government’s changes to the national school standards mean that all independent and faith schools must ‘actively promote’ the rights set out in the Equality Act.   An extract from the DfE consultation document on the Proposed New Independent School Standards says this:

. . . schools must actively promote the specified principles, including furthering tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions and encouraging respect for democracy.  A minimum approach, for example putting up posters on a notice board and organising an occasional visit to places of worship would fall short of ‘actively promoting’.  Schools will be expected to focus on, and be able to show how their work with pupils is effective in embedding fundamental British values.  ‘Actively promote’ also means challenging pupils, staff or parents expressing opinions contrary to fundamental British values.

Every Christian parent should be alarmed!  We’ve heard in recent weeks of an independent Christian school in Reading being threatened with closure for failing to uphold ‘British values’, and that it must demonstrate that it is actively promoting other faiths by inviting representatives of other faiths to lead assemblies and lessons.

Orthodox Jewish families are already alarmed!  Several Orthodox Jewish schools have also been targeted by Ofsted recently, and girls as young as nine have been questioned about their knowledge of how babies are made and whether they knew any gay people. 

These examples, and there are many others, confirm that Nicky Morgan MP, the Education Secretary, is following her brief, ‘to take on Britain’s faith schools by ordering them to teach pupils to be tolerant of other religions and respect lesbian, gay and transgender relationships’.

Up until now, parents who have had concerns about what their children would be taught in a state school have had the option of sending their children to an independent faith school, where they can be sure that the values and faith of the school reflects their own heartfelt convictions.  Often there has been a considerable personal cost in doing so, since education outside the state sector doesn’t come cheap.  But it’s been a sacrifice parents have made to safeguard what their children learn in their formative years.

Now, no school is safe.  Ofsted inspectors, instead of critiquing a school on the basis of how well it is outworking its vision and providing a good standard of education across the board, now have to police the promotion of Equality Law concepts.  As a result a Christian school (for example) which provides an excellent education firmly rooted in Biblical principles and produces young men and women who love the Lord as well as achieving their personal best in public examinations, will be marked down and threatened with closure because it will not compromise its Christian ethos.

This situation in English education will only get worse.  It’s a political, not a party-political move, so don’t be fooled into thinking that a change in Government will create a change in ideology.  The furniture may be shifted round a bit, but the goal will be the same – to remove any vestige of our Judaeo-Christian heritage from all educational establishments. 

Christian parents, wake up!  Education is the place where opinions and mind-sets are formed, and our children are imbibing an actively promoted godless agenda.  The new legislation has not just evolved haphazardly; it’s part of a plan to remove the God of the Bible completely from our education system and replace him with the god of this world and the accompanying dystopian nightmare – a vision which our politicians are either deliberately or unwittingly buying into.  Schools are no longer free to reflect the wishes of discerning parents; they’re a significant part of the Government’s propaganda machine.

In order to stand firm and resist the lies of the enemy, our children need to know their identity as children of God like never before, and they need to know clearly whom they serve – the one, true God, creator, saviour and Lord.  Canon Andrew White, the ‘Bishop of Baghdad’ reports that young children in that war zone have chosen to be beheaded rather than deny the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Our children need to be equally as unmoveable in their faith as the battle over the hearts and minds of the next generation intensifies.

Whilst prayerfully considering what action to take in order to combat the threat the new legislation poses, Orthodox Judaeo-Christian families must take these words to heart:

The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts.  Impress them on your children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up (Deuteronomy 6:4-6)

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