For the sake of clarity, in the UK there’s several different types of schools. Firstly, fully private schools, some of which, confusingly, are known as public schools. These receive no government funding. Many of the ‘frummer’ schools are fully private, as this allows them complete control over their curriculum, within very broad perimeters. An example of this would be Etz Chaim school in Manchester. Secondly, state-aided schools. These are private schools in most respects, except in order to receive state aid they have to commit to certain guidelines, for example a commitment to a certain standard of secular education. The funding they receive covers a portion of the schools costs, although they are fee paying. Pardes House Primary School is an example of that. Thirdly, you have state schools, what in the US would be known as public schools. These are run by the state, with the basic curriculum set by the education ministry. Also, a fourth category would be an academy, which is independent of government control but fully funded by the state. A type of academy is a free school, which is set up and run by the parents of a community. JFS, or the Jewish Free School, in London, is an example of this.
Most frum Jewish schools are fully private or state-aided to avoid close government control of their curriculum. But Ofsted have broad powers, and all schools are inspected and receive a rating. A school has to be judged to be providing a satisfactory level of education, and if it consistently fails to do that, it risks forced closure. A private school has more leeway in that it can set its own parameters, and has to fulfill those. But as regards the issue of having to teach subjects regarding modesty, toeivah and issues ragrading gender, there is no particular reason why a fully private school should have an easier time than a state-aided one. It has to fulfill what Ofsted class as a full education, and that includes so-called ‘British values’.
It’s worth noting that inspections can be over 5 years apart. Therefore, these stories do not emerge at once, but arise if and when the school fails an inspection. Certain inspections have led to problems of this nature, others have not. The standards are not applied consistently. Since there are so few frum Jewish schools, and inspections are relatively rare, it’s difficult to see at what stage of this story we are holding. The worst could be over, it may have just began. But what has been consistent throughout is that it is not the teaching standards that are causing the issue, it is the specific issue of ‘values’. This has been repeatedly made clear. The case that made the news most widely was the Vihznitz Girls School, that failed three consecutive inspections, a newsworthy story regardless of the cause. And in that case, it was made abundantly clear that it was down to the failure to teach the children about toeivah and suchlike. Insinuating that the issue at hand is poor teaching standards is prejudiced and plain false. And it is not restricted to that one school, virtually every school has had to deal with this specific issue in some respect recently, and have had to get around it in different ways. There have been stories in various schools of inspectors taking it upon themselves to bring the issues up before the children, and similar such events. As I have said, there was an entirely separate issue of unregistered yeshivos that is an entirely different story, that has since passed. There is no need to conflate the two.