EVEN though teachers are breaking the law on political impartiality, they are now revealed to be teaching that the most popular political party (Reform), newspapers (Daily Mail and the Sun), and views (immigration should be controlled, and arrivals not accommodated in hotels) are ‘far-right’.
How do they get away with it? They seem even encouraged by their immunity to double down.
A month ago, an audio recording emerged of a teacher in Trafford, Greater Manchester, telling pupils that she has been countering protests against asylum hotels, where she saw her opponents ‘using Nazi salutes and throwing very racist abuse towards the people inside’. and using British flags to express racism and to intimidate (even though she claims not to be saying that British flags are ‘inherently racist’).
When a parent visited to complain, the school called the police, who detained him for eight hours. The school eventually apologised.
A few days later, ten schools bussed about 100 minors to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to distribute leaflets, at the behest of the National Education Union. The NEU was lobbying for school meals to be provided to all pupils, beyond Keir Starmer’s extension of the entitlement to all recipients of Universal Credit. A teacher lamely claimed it was all the choice of the students.
A month on, we learn from a concerned parent that teachers at a chain of academies in England owned by Orion Education are teaching that Reform UK, the most popular party in Britain, is a far-right party, and that some supporters ‘have extremist views’.
A PowerPoint slide plots parties and ideologies on a dimension from left to right. On the far left are communists. On the far right are fascists. Reform UK is plotted slightly to the left of the fascists.
Other slides report that ‘critics’ complain that England’s flag is a ‘provocative and exclusionary symbol used by far-right groups to intimidate immigrants and minorities’.
Further slides warn that newspapers such as the Daily Mail and the Sun ‘often publish dramatic headlines about immigration, especially about “small-boat crossings” in the English Channel’.
‘These stories sometimes use words like “flood” or “invasion”, making migrants sound like a threat.’
‘This type of reporting can make people feel afraid or angry, which far-right groups then use to support their arguments.’
The pupils (these slides have been shown to at least Year 10 pupils, aged 14 or 15 years) are instructed to ‘use trusted sites like the BBC, the Guardian [and] Parliament.uk, instead of sites like the Sun, random blogs or YouTube channels’.
Waving national flags and opposing immigration have become the new targets for educators, supplanting whiteness, masculinity and heterosexuality. Inevitably, those identities are tied to national flag-waving and opposition to immigration.
By 2020, 73 per cent of British school children had been taught at least one of: ‘white privilege’, ‘unconscious bias’, ‘systemic racism’, ‘patriarchy’ and innumerable genders. I’m betting that by the end of this year, an equal proportion of children will have been taught that Britain’s most popular party and newspapers, and views on immigration and asylum hotels, are far-right.
To remind teachers, local authorities, Ofsted, and the national government: the 1996 Education Act says that ‘the local authority, governing body, and head teacher shall forbid (a) the pursuit of partisan political activity by any of those registered pupils at a maintained school who are junior pupils, and (b) the promotion of partisan political views.’
The latest government guidance on the Act repeatedly warns schools to ‘ensure political impartiality’.
So how do teachers get away with political partiality?
Locally, education authorities are passing complaints back to schools or to Ofsted, which passes complaints back to schools. Schools are investigating themselves.
Parents volunteer as school governors, but schools routinely wait months before filling vacancies while they busily hold meetings without any external oversight.
Schools effectively appoint compliant parent governors by inviting applications before any open call for volunteers.
The school’s and trust’s own staff form the majority on the board, so can always out-vote parents.
When parents don’t gush about whatever the school does, the staff hold meetings without inviting them, or present information too late or vague for consideration, until their term expires or they quit.
Here’s a solution already normative in America. School governance should be open to the public. In some hearings, all attending parents can vote. In some constituencies, school boards must contain equal representation of parents and staff, and must be chaired by a democratically elected commissioner.
Let’s make education democratic again, in both accountability and bias.
