Spectre of Sunday school inspection returns

Our Head of Education, Steve Beegoo, explains the dangers indicated by a new call for evidence.

The Out of School Settings (OOSS) call for evidence has reintroduced the spectre of Christian groups being tightly monitored by state regulators on ‘safeguarding’ grounds. A similar attempt in 2018 nearly resulted in Ofsted being able to inspect church Sunday schools, and this call for evidence indicates the same desire to monitor what is occurring in many private and religious settings in a comparable way. Additionally, those Christians home educating their children together in groups, could find themselves under suspicion and intense monitoring from local authorities as a result of the changes envisioned. This is being reported internationally. The church in the UK needs to respond.

Scope

The call for evidence explains that OOSS “include settings such as supplementary schools, tuition centres and private tutors, extra-curricular clubs and activities (such as sports and arts), uniformed youth organisations (such as Scouts and Brownies), holiday camps and activity centres, as well as religious settings offering tuition or education in their own faith.” This call for evidence and plans to regulate are clearly all-encompassing. Parents have traditionally been expected to be competent enough to decide which groups they would be happy to send their children to, and to assess their safety. The government believes it can do better, and that to legislate towards having an increasing number of state actors with local authority safeguarding officers, even to inspect churches, will “enhance the safety of the OOSS sector, and to instil parents and carers with confidence that they are choosing safe settings for their children”

Roles

A variety of approaches are suggested in the call for evidence, and respondents are asked to explain what they believe the state’s role should be in increasing registration and regulation related specifically to ‘safeguarding’. These range from “National mandatory registration with regulation’ to no further measures. The truth is that there is already recently updated and very sensible advice and guidance provided to OOSS, and local authorities already have routes whereby concerns can be raised related to the safeguarding of children when they appear to be at risk.

The issue for the already stretched resources of our social services is that they cannot keep up with the very clear neglect and abuse risks being presented to them, as the tragic situation of Sara Sharif highlighted. Directing resources to further registration and regulation, with inspectors and new inspection regimes, would clearly not support those children who are currently in real danger.

Sanctions

The prospect of churches and Christian families being required on pain of state sanctions to register with local authorities, and to be regularly inspected, is also becoming more likely since the passing of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill through the House of Commons.  This controversial bill remains in the House of Lords and is under intense scrutiny, given the unprecedented powers it affords to the state. This parallel call for evidence is further confirmation that this Labour government believes that it is best placed to safeguard “all children”, and should keep legislating until it has done so. As many commentators have noted, this trajectory takes our culture from risk-based oversight to ‘suspicion-led surveillance’, with proactive identification and investigation of settings which provide safe opportunities for children.

Values

As ‘progressive’ values in local authorities predominate, and our culture itself moves away from a biblically Christian worldview, what is decided to be safe or unsafe moves from physical considerations to what beliefs may or may not be ‘safe’. Many activists have persuaded society, and especially schools, that encouraging children to self-identify their gender, or to embrace a sexuality identity, is the safe and healthy way to become a secure and flourishing individual.

We know of parents who have already found that disagreeing with school or local authority safeguarding officers regarding their children converting to a gender-ideology based understanding of their identity, has had them labelled as a safeguarding risk to their own children. This is what can occur if mandatory state actors are required by legislation to judge traditional Christian beliefs around sex and gender as relevant to the safety of under 18s, even in their family homes and churches. As we have seen with many schools, the inspectors themselves have promoted a partisan progressive view related to LGBT issues and what they believe must be promoted and celebrated for the safety and wellbeing of all children.

Capacity

In addition to this, the capacity and ability for voluntary groups to provide evidence, processes and detailed documentation in a similar way to the huge burden now on schools, would in all likelihood cause many groups to close or reduce their services. These points need making to the government, and if you are involved in any way in such OOSS, we need you to make your concerns clear, so that draconian legislation is not introduced to parliament.

You can find advice on completing the call for evidence here.