St Albert's revisited

HMIE this week delivered a damning report into the management of St Albert's Primary School in Pollokshields, Glasgow.

Readers may remember that I blogged about the school almost two years ago, after Muslim parents were accused of being "extremists" for objecting to their children being forced to sit through Mass in the Muslim-majority Catholic denominational school.

I said at the time, in the face of much criticism, that the Head Teacher Frances Diver was grossly mismanaging the situation. It would be easy to say I feel vindicated in that stance given that she was singled out for criticism in the report, and was effectively sacked a few months ago in anticipation of the report's findings. The issues that HMIE identify though are more serious than this.

They also found that pace of learning was slow and that the kids were capable of much more. I've heard this said about other schools with large ethnic rolls in Glasgow by teachers that have worked in them. Expectations are set very low and a culture of low achievement is endemic. This may actually even be a wider issue amongst inner city schools, but is definitely present amongst ethnic minority ones.

In terms of religious observation at St Albert's though, the situation now is that the new head teacher has returned to how things were done 20 years ago. The few Catholic children there are in the school are taken out for Mass, while the Muslim children and those of other faiths carry on with class. Common sense has prevailed.

As I said, it was not easy talking about this issue when the story broke though. The front page of the Daily Record attacked the Muslim parents at the school, and outrageously, local MP Mohammad Sarwar didn't just abandon those parents, but he joined in with the attacks on them. Local leadership demands more than just making a judgement about which way the wind is blowing.

Comments

[Yunus]

My experience of working in two 95% Muslim primary schools concurs with your conclusions, as does anecdote plus the literature on Islamophobia in education. It is also reflected at the political-strategic level - for example, in the tiny amount of research done on E2L pupils, compared to literacy or numeracy, although much is by self-motivated teachers turned academics and thus of extremely high quality. My first experience of this was as a student teacher - and I was shocked to the core. I simply didn't expect to hear teachers - middle class vocational professionals - using sententious waffle to suggest that, in plain English, 'Pakis are thick'. Recent research has made it clear that racism among teachers is real, although teaching unions continue to deny it. It's a national disgrace.

[aineliva]

Several things. One, it sounds pretty draconian, "forced to go Mass"; it would appear there are still Catholics with pretty medieval attitudes to Catholicism and others religion.

Two, I notice that you have subtly emphasised that the Catholic children are in a minority at St Alberts, several times in this piece. And from this what exactly should be concluded Osama?

I know of no Islamic school, where there is even a small minority of non-islamic pupils, it seems that segregation is the norm in Islamic schools.

So what I find suprising here is that Muslim parents have actually sent their children to a Catholic school. And that there seems to be some inference here that a "majority" view might somehow become the "norm". Which would of course return the school to exactly the same conditions which prevailed before the previous head teacher Mrs Diver departed. But that's ok because "they" are after all a "minority", the Catholics I mean, not the Muslims.

Would that sum up the sub-text here?

[Ted]

Why do we even have religious schools? Is it really important that it's a Catholic or Muslim who teaches your kid physics? Is it of earth-shattering importance that the child next to your child in the toilets shares the same belief system (cf. the RC hierarchy and their 'objections' about the shared campus system)?

Anyone would think we had money to burn in this country with the pathetic indulgence made to parents over religious schools.