Children ‘at risk’ in Christian fundamentalist schools in the UK, warns government watchdog

Jan 3, 2017 by Jill

by Siobhan Fenton, Independent:

A number of Christian fundamentalist schools have been downgraded by government inspectors following an investigation by The Independent which revealed children at some schools that follow the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum are taught that LGBT people are inferior and girls must submit to men.

The investigation also uncovered historic allegations of corporal punishment, exorcisms being performed on children and schoolgirls being “groomed” for marriage to much older men.

Inspectors say they fear “children are at risk” at some schools after finding in some ACE institutions safeguarding plans to be flawed or non-existent and that staff who come into contact with children sometimes have not undergone background checks to see if they are safe to work with children.

The Independent previously revealed allegations by former pupils that children were subject to serious mistreatment at some of the schools, which are operated by fundamentalist Christian communities and teach more than a thousand pupils at 26 different ACE schools in the UK.

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