Teachers and other staff at some independent faith schools are being segregated by gender, the chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, has said in a letter to the education secretary.
In one case, staff at Rabia girls and boys school in Luton were segregated during whole-school training, with men in one room while the session was broadcast to women in a separate part of the school.
In a separate incident, the school insisted on segregating male and female staff using a dividing screen across the middle of the room during an initial meeting with inspectors from the schools watchdog, Ofsted.
“This meeting was not carried out in a religious setting, but in a classroom,” said Wilshaw, who warned that such segregation flouts the requirement to promote fundamental British values in schools.
Rabia is a Muslim day school with 160 pupils. It has received a series of adverse Ofsted judgments. Last year, the school was criticised for treating boys and girls differently, limiting girls to sewing and knitting in design and technology classes. [The Guardian] Read more
