Vishnitz Girls School is a religious primary school in Britain for young jewish girls between the ages of 3 and 8.
And the school is currently underheat for not sharing enough information with the students about LGBTQ life and gender reassignment.
Vishnitz Girls School is a private school, thus it is under different obligations for what it can and cannot teach the students.
That said, it still is under the jurisdiction of the Departement of Education and the Ofsted (The Office of Standards in Education, Children’s Services, and Skills).
Ofsted regularly inspects schools and children’s services to make sure that they stay up to standards on education, and apparently Vishnitz Girls School had been inspected three times.
The most recent time, it was found that that school did not educate the students enough on LGBTQ life.
The defense for the inspection findings is that the children were prevented from gaining “a full understanding of fundamental British values”.
More specifically, the failure to address LGBTQ issues “restricts pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and does not promote equality of opportunity in ways that take account of differing lifestyles,” and the students were “shielded from learning about certain differences between people, such as sexual orientation.”
That said, there were some good things said about the school.
For instance, the inspectors found that the school was “clearly focused on teaching pupils to respect everybody, regardless of beliefs and lifestyle,” and that its teachers showed, “good subject knowledge and high-quality classroom resources”.
Some, like Gill Robins of the Christians in Education group, have come to the defense of the school. Robins says:
“It’s now been made crystal clear by Ofsted that the Equality Act is actually hierarchical, with sexual orientation and gender reassignment at the apex of the Act."
“All equalities are equal but some equalities are more equal than others."
“Ofsted has revealed its true agenda. It doesn’t matter how good your school is in all other respects – simply refusing to teach very young children about gender reassignment will lead to your closure.”
This is a tricky situation. For starters, these are young children between the ages of 3-8. One would question if a conversation about LGBTQ issues is appropriate for such young minds, especially to have with people outside of the family.
That said, if countries like Cambodia can be careful and caring in presenting LGBTQ issues in the classroom, so too can British schools like Vishnitz Girls School.
And conversations/lessons don’t have to be all out debate like those had by adults. It could be more nuanced and appropriate topics for those young minds.
But what do you think? Is Ofsted right to chastise the Vishnitz Girls School or should these young girls focus on their math and language skills instead?
