While recognising the “depths of discomfort” around the subject, she said, there was “nothing more that I can do to be flexible. I do not have the discretion”.
What Charedi schools sought was “a group opt-out from the law” she said.
But the hands of Charedi heads were tied too, the ever-polite Mr Spitzer countered, since parents insisted sex education was not a subject they wanted taught.
Turning to education more generally, he cited Ofsted’s report last year that three out of every five Jewish independent schools were rated as inadequate or requiring improvement, compared to a minority of Christian or Muslim independents.
While acknowledging some schools still had a long way to go to raise standards, he suggested the current inspection framework was too rigid.
If children had once been three years behind national standards in literacy but were now only one and a half years behind, that was not yet good enough, he said, but the school had made “a significant amount of progress”.
Such schools might be taken out of the regular inspection cycle for a while, he suggested, and instead assessed by a “remedial framework” that recognised what progress they had made.
Finding a model that worked for everyone was a “rocky path”, Mrs Spielman concluded, but offered assurances that “we will always work constructively with your community”.
