Schools 'break law' to spy on pupils

Pupils are monitored by CCTV cameras as frequently as inmates in prisons and passengers at airports, research shows

• Jessica Shepherd
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 March 2010 14.19 GMT
• Article history

Young people are being stripped of basic liberties, says researcher. Photograph: Alamy

 

Most schools in the UK are probably breaking the law by failing to alert students to the scores of cameras capturing their conversations and movements in playgrounds and classrooms, a study has claimed.

Hull parents warned over 'fundamentalist' faith school

The school will follow a curriculum promoting the literal truth of the Bible

Parents have been warned that a private faith school set to open in Hull this year could "indoctrinate" children with "fundamentalist" Christian teaching.

The £2,000-a-year New Life Academy is due to open in Bridlington Avenue in the west of the city this September.

Senior minister Reverend Jarrod Cooper said it would offer "individualised" Christian learning to allow pupils to develop at their own pace.

Opponents say children will be isolated and taught the Bible is literally true.

This is a school which is run by a church which is actually quite fundamentalist Terry Sanderson, National Secular Society president

The school will follow the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum formulated by an educational products company in the US.

ACE lists its principles in a "statement of faith" which includes a belief that the Bible is literally true.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: "You do not have to look far on the internet to find people who describe themselves as survivors of ACE education because it is an indoctrination style of work.

"It is tutoring with a very strong biblical flavour that dominates everything.

"A lot of people who have been through this system are saying it stopped them from being able to think for themselves.

"They learn things by rote, not by inquiry and exploration.

'Quite fundamentalist'

"The children are kept separate from each other in what they call cubes; they are not allowed to talk to each other. The tutors come along and help them learn long passages from the Bible by rote.

"I fear for these really deeply religious schools because this is a school which is run by a church which is actually quite fundamentalist.

"They can make their own religious education and it can be anything, it can include creationism and literal belief in Genesis and all this kind of thing.

"I don't think it's fair on children to saddle them with that and then discourage them from questioning it at all.

"Any parent who is thinking of going to this school should think and ask questions about this system before they commit themselves to it."

Mr Cooper said: "We are using the ACE curriculum which is a kind of individualised Christian learning.

This is an individualised learning so every child... learns at their own pace The Reverend Jarrod Cooper, New Life Academy senior minister

"You need to forget the lecture/classroom type of environment where the teacher is teaching 20, 30, 40 pupils and whether they have all got the subject or not the class is moving on.

"This is an individualised learning so every child has their own learning station and learns at their own pace."

He said he had visited similar schools in Europe and South Africa and "noticed they were raising quite a good calibre of child".

Asked how the school would approach the teaching of science, and evolution in particular, he said: "A lot of people think Christians spend all their time thinking about a seven-day creation; they really don't.

"It is not a main part of the church's everyday thinking."

On sex education, he said: "A lot of people want basic good morality taught and marriage being the bedrock of society, but not in any indoctrinating way."

Cory Doctorow at 6:51 AM March 11, 2010

Mississippi's Itawamba County school district has cancelled a prom after Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old student, asked permission to bring her girlfriend as her date. The student planned to wear a tux. The school district's bureaucratic non-excuse for the cancellation is that it's "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events." The district appears to be tap-dancing around the reason for the cancellation in an effort to avoid openly saying "We are scared of teh ghey," since that would open them up to legal liability. The ACLU isn't buying it. They've told the school district that they've got until Wednesday to change the policy or else.

"A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it's really retaliation," McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. Calls to McMillen by The Associated Press late Wednesday went unanswered...

The ACLU said McMillen approached school officials shortly before the memo went out because she knew same-sex dates had been banned in the past. The ACLU said district officials told McMillen she and her girlfriend wouldn't be allowed to arrive together, that she would not be allowed to wear a tuxedo, and that she and her girlfriend might be asked to leave if their presence made any other students "uncomfortable."

McMillen said she feared she would be thrown out of the prom because "we do live in the Bible Belt."

Miss. school prom off after lesbian's date request

ACLU Demands Mississippi School Allow Lesbian Student To Attend Prom With Girlfriend

Good god, it's like the middle ages out there...

The Government has reneged on its commitment to ensuring all children will receive broad, balanced and objective sex and relationship education (SRE).

Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, this week tabled an amendment to the Government’s Children, Schools and Families Bill which in effect will provide an opt-out for religious schools when Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, which includes SRE, becomes compulsory in schools from September 2011. The Government originally intended all governing bodies and head teachers to have regard to a set of "principles" which include statements about how PSHE should be taught. Such principles stated that PSHE should be taught in a way that endeavours to promote equality and encourages acceptance of diversity. However, the Government has now laid an amendment to this Bill which many fear would curtail the implementation of SRE and PSHE in religious schools. The new amendment states that the principles “are not to be read as preventing the governing body or head teacher of a school within subsection (7B) from causing or allowing PSHE to be taught in a way that reflects the school’s religious character.”

The Catholic Education Service (CES) was quick to claim the credit for the Government’s apparent U-turn. A statement on its website claimed the amendment was tabled following a period of extensive lobbying by the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales.

National Secular Society spokesperson Stephen Evans said, “It is disgraceful that the Government is seen to be willing to sacrifice the health and well being of children in order to satisfy the demands of a minority religious lobby. The Government has already agreed that the issues that Personal, Social, Health and Economic education covers are central to all children and young people’s well-being and to their healthy development as they grow up. It is therefore a betrayal of children’s rights for the Government to now say that children in religious schools can be denied the same entitlement to objective teaching on issues such as contraception, safe sex, sexuality and abortion as children in community schools.

“Only this week the Joint Committee on Human Rights welcomed the Bill saying it welcomed the Government's explicit acceptance that the teaching of sex and relationships in faith schools must present material that is accurate and balanced, must not present that faith's views as the only valid views, and must promote equality and diversity. However, the new amendment casts serious doubt on the Government’s willingness to ensure the rights of children in religious schools are protected from opt-outs demanded by self-interested religious groups.”

The Government’s amendment was also criticised by the Children's Rights Alliance for England. Carolyne Willow, national coordinator of the Alliance said, “This amendment was completely unnecessary as there is already provision in the Bill for PSHE to take into account different perspectives, including religious beliefs. It is absolutely vital that sex and relationships education funded by the State occurs within the context of commitment to equality and respect for diversity; anything less is discriminatory.”

In the Guardian, a spokesman from the Department for Children, Schools and Families dismissed the complaints. Faith schools would not be able to opt out of statutory SRE lessons when they came into effect in September 2011, he stressed.

"All maintained schools will be required to teach full programmes of study in line with the principles outlined in the bill, including promoting equality and encouraging acceptance of diversity.

"Schools with a religious character will be free to express their faith and reflect the ethos of their school, but what they cannot do is suggest that their views are the only ones."

This meant a Catholic school would be required to teach the facts about contraception, but would also be able to reflect the church's views on its use.

Read the JCHR report on the Children, Schools and Families Bill

Britain's first Asian judge Sir Mota Singh says Sikhs should not be banned from wearing kirpans to school or work

• Adam Gabbatt
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 February 2010 09.50 GMT
• Article history

The comments by Sir Mota Singh (c) follow several cases of Sikhs being banned from wearing the daggers and other religious artefacts in schools. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Rex Features

Britain's first Asian judge has called for Sikhs to be allowed to wear their ceremonial daggers to school.

The comments by Sir Mota Singh QC, come after a number of cases of Sikhs being banned from wearing the daggers – known as kirpans – and other religious artefacts in schools or workplaces.

"Not allowing someone who is baptised to wear a kirpan is not right," Singh told the BBC Asian Network.

"I see no objection to a young Sikh girl or boy, who's been baptised, being allowed to wear their kirpan if that's what they want to do."

In October last year a Sikh police officer won a discrimination case against Greater Manchester police after being told to remove his turban for riot training.

In the same month a 14-year-old Sikh boy was banned from wearing his Kirpan – which under Sikhism is one of five "articles of faith" which must be carried at all times – to his school in Barnet, London.

In 2006, schoolgirl Sarika Watkins-Singh won a high court judgment allowing her to wear the kara, a slim steel bracelet which she argued was central to her faith, to her school in south Wales. She had previously been excluded for breaking a "no jewellery" rule after refusing to remove the bangle.

"The girl not allowed to wear the kara is a petty thing for the administrators to have done and it doesn't do them any good," Singh said. "It is the right of every young girl and boy to be educated at the school of their choice. For him or her to be refused admission on that sort of ground, as far as I'm concerned, is quite wrong."

Singh, who was awarded a knighthood in the 2010 New Year honours list, said he wore a kirpan.

"I've always worn it for the last 35 to 40 years, even when I was sitting in court or visiting public buildings, including Buckingham Palace.".

In addition to the kara and kirpan, the other articles of faith are kesh (uncut hair), kanga (a wooden comb used for keeping hair in place under the turban) and kachera (specially designed cotton underwear).

The kirpan, which can range in length but is commonly 7.5cm (3in) long, is carried in a sheath and strapped to the body, usually under clothing.

The children's secretary wants an urgent decision on whether the law should be changed to close a loophole that allows children to be smacked by Sunday school teachers and private tutors

• Jessica Shepherd
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 January 2010 12.10 GMT
• Article history

Parents can still smack children legally, but should any teachers be allowed to? Photograph: Rex Features

The children's secretary, Ed Balls, has ordered an urgent inquiry into whether Sunday school teachers and private tutors should be allowed to smack their pupils.

A loophole in the law means that while teachers in state and private schools are banned from smacking children, their counterparts in faith schools are not.

Teachers who take pupils for fewer than 12.5 hours of lessons a week have the same status as someone who is standing in for a parent, and can therefore give a child a mild smack. They can plead the defence of "reasonable punishment".

Balls has demanded that the government's chief adviser on children's safety, Sir Roger Singleton, report to him within a week on whether the law should be changed.

The issue has been raised by Ann Cryer, a Labour MP, who wants the loophole closed.

In a letter to Singleton, Balls wrote that the government would like to "progress to a point where smacking is seen as unacceptable by the vast majority of parents, and is only used as a last resort, if at all".

But ministers would stop short of making smacking illegal because it would "criminalise decent parents who decide to administer a mild smack," he said.

Balls wrote: "We recognise that whilst it seems that fewer parents smack their children, most currently do not believe they should be banned from doing so by law. Our approach is to provide parents with support and guid ance to help them manage their children's behaviour more effectively.

"The defence of reasonable punishment may be available to those who teach in certain part-time educational and learning settings, for example religious instruction that children attend at the weekend. I am concerned to establish the key issues here and whether this is an area in which we need to consider a change, in the interests of strengthening safeguards for children."

But the schools minister, Vernon Coaker, said he feared a change in the law could create "unintended problems" such as stopping fathers from smacking children they care for, but for whom they do not have parental responsibility.

In his reply to Cryer in the House of Commons last week, Balls said: "The important point to make is that there is not one rule for a child in a madrassa and another for a child in any other circumstance.

"The use of physical punishment against any child is wrong; it is outside the law and is not fair to children.

"I do not think we should tolerate any use of physical punishment in any school or learning setting in which trusted adults are supposed to be looking after children, not abusing them."

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat schools spokesman, said: "The government needs to legislate to protect children – not leave an opt-out simply because it fears some ethnic or religious backlash."

School officials have suspended a 10-year-old girl in New York for bringing peppermint oil to the John Mandracchia-Sawmill Intermediate School and giving drops to her fifth grade friends to flavor their water. The Commack School District insists that the oil “is an unregulated over-the-counter drug.”

The peppermint-laden drug dealer is Sara Morton-Greiner. She was suspended for one day.

Now many would argue that this could have been handled as an innocent mistake and the girl given a reprimand and letter for her parents. But peppermint oil has long been recognized as a gateway flavor to Spearmint for “Mento-heads.” Their sweet smelling breath is an well-known indicator of an underground mint-based drug economy at schools. When Sara is clean and her breath is stale, she can resume her education.

For the full story, click here.

Religious education teacher paid for boy to have tattoo during week-long relationship

• Helen Carter
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 November 2009 14.37 GMT
• Article history

A religious education teacher who admitted 10 charges of engaging a 15-year-old pupil in sexual activity has been jailed today.

Madeleine Martin, 39, of Knutsford, Cheshire, admitted beginning a week-long relationship with the boy, who was under 16 at the time, when she appeared in court in September.

Today she was sentenced to 32 months in prison at Manchester Minshull Street crown court. Martin was also suspended from her job at a Greater Manchester school, which cannot be named for legal reasons.

The court was told that Martin had qualified as a teacher four years ago and first met her victim in September 2008.

The pair began communicating via the Facebook social networking website and their contact escalated into a sexual relationship.

On 9 February she asked the boy to do something that would remind him of her when they were apart. She drove him to a tattooist and paid for him to have "Mad" and a heart etched onto his skin.

They then drove to a secluded area, where they had sex. The boy quickly decided to end their involvement and told Martin.

He eventually told his mother what had happened and she immediately reported the matter to police in April.

Judge Jonathan Geake told her: "It is clear that your life came to a very low ebb. Unhappily it was against that background that you were trusted with mentoring this young teenage boy who himself was vulnerable in the sense that he was having his own difficulties at school.

"It is clear from the way in which the prosecution presented that case that rather than mentor him in the proper way, you used him as an emotional support and comfort for yourself rather than the other way round.

"You started to abuse the trust you were entrusted with. Eventually you lured him into intimacies which should never have happened and which you now admit should never have happened."

Mark Fireman, in mitigation, said his client had brought "shame on herself and her family" and had lost her career, and her friends. He said at the time of sexual contact she was going through a "very difficult time in her personal life". Her relationship with her husband had ended, and her sister was suffering from terminal cancer and eventually died.

"The matter left her extremely depressed and perhaps vulnerable to thoughts and actions that would not have normally have taken place."

He added: "It is an incident that she bitterly, bitterly regrets. She knows that she has caused great harm."

In a victim impact statement, the boy said he had been taunted by his fellow pupils and had not returned to the school. He also said he was embarrassed to show people the tattoo Martin had encouraged him to get. His mother told the court that her relationship with her son had suffered, and that he had become lethargic and lost interest in his hobbies. She added: "He has lost the sparkle he always had."

Outside court, Detective Sergeant Dave Moores of Tameside Child protection unit said: "Martin's actions will leave emotional scars on her victim and his family and have also impacted on the wider community.

"I would like to praise the bravery of the victim in speaking out and ensuring justice was done for him.

"I am satisfied that she has been given the sentence she deserves and hope this will send a strong message that this behaviour will not be tolerated."

He added that Martin would remain on the sex offenders' register.

A Brazilian university has publicly expelled a woman who was heckled by hundreds of fellow students for wearing a short, pink skirt to class, taking out newspaper ads today to publicly accuse her of immorality.

The private Bandeirante University in São Bernardo do Campo, outside of São Paulo, said 20-year-old Geisy Arruda disrespected "ethical principles and academic dignity and morality".

Arruda made headlines last month when she had to be escorted away by police after she tried to go to class wearing the mini-dress. She put on a professor's white coat and left amid a hail of insults and curses.

Video footage of the incident, which occurred last month, was posted on YouTube and picked up by Brazilian networks.

It shows her being heckled by hundreds of other students. Arruda has since appeared frequently on television, saying she is struggling to return to normal life after being humiliated.

Bandeirante University published advertisements accusing Arruda of attending class with "inadequate clothing" and having a provocative attitude that was "incompatible with the university environment."

In the ad, titled "Educational Responsibility," the college said it had warned Arruda to change her behaviour and decided to expel her after talking to students, staff and Arruda herself. It accused her of posing for pictures and provoking other students.

Arruda told Folha Online that she was appalled. "I was the victim," she said. "How can I be expelled? It's absurd."

Arruda said she learned of her expulsion through the news media and had not received official notification.

She said university officials told her last week she would be allowed to return to classes with the protection of a security guard.