Fundamentalist “faith school” in meltdown

The first “faith school” from a non Anglican or Catholic tradition to be funded by the taxpayer is in crisis. A hit squad has been sent in to try to rescue the John Loughborough School in Haringey, founded by a fundamentalist cult, the Seventh-day Adventists.

Haringey council has — with the Government’s backing — sent in its own appointees to take over from headteacher June Alexis at a time of mounting concern that the school is in "meltdown". The council has refused to confirm or deny claims that Dr Alexis has been suspended.

The school is facing the prospect of a damning report from Ofsted after the education watchdog warned Dr Alexis last year that pupils’ standards of achievement and behaviour were not good enough. Ofsted served a formal "notice to improve" on John Loughborough a year ago and the Evening Standard understands that senior inspectors have visited the school in recent weeks to see if it is making progress.

Ofsted's latest report is expected to be published in the next few weeks but the council decided to act before that and installed an interim executive board to take charge of the school at the end of last year. A Haringey spokesman said: "Results for young people at John Loughborough School have been declining over recent years and this year it was the worst performing school in London. That could not be allowed to continue.

John Loughborough was private before it became the first Christian faith school from outside the Anglican and Catholic churches to receive state funding following the Government's decision in 1998 to expand the number and type of publicly subsidised faith schools. The then education secretary David Blunkett had already approved the transfer of Islamia Primary in Brent to the public sector as Britain's first state Islamic school.

All of John Loughborough's 300 pupils are black but less than half are practising Seventh-day Adventists.

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “David Blunkett once said he would like to bottle the ethos of faith schools and give it to all schools. I wonder what would be in the bottle from this particular school?”

29 February 2008