‘Venomous’ threats made to Ofsted inspector who criticised faith schools

Amanda Spielman, in an interview with The Times, says she will not keep quiet about the abuse she has received since criticising some faith schools.

Spielman said she had been the victim of some “pretty venomous stuff”, receiving “nasty tweets” and threatening emails from what she believed to be a “mixture of Islamic extremists and the hard left”.

“I had an email, which was the most threatening one, which was along the lines of ‘We know where you live and we can get you any time we want to’.”

In her report published this week she remarked that some independent faith schools are “deliberately choosing” not to meet standards, due to the tensions between legal requirements and community expectations.

Some of her criticism referred to illegal Muslim schools which she said weren’t teaching “British values”.

Spielman revealed that one of Ofsted’s officers was forced to take additional security measures after inspectors were repeatedly sent extreme Islamic literature.

She said some faith schools: “seek to isolate young people from the mainstream, do not prepare them for life in Britain or, worse, and actively undermine fundamental British values”.