The education secretary described Katharine Birbalsingh as a “fantastic headteacher” and backed school leaders’ rights to set policies for their own schools.
Speaking on LBC on Monday, Gillian Keegan was asked how much support she has given to Ms Birbalsingh, who is at the centre of a legal challenge after she banned prayer rituals at her school in Wembley.
Ms Keegan said the government is not involved in the legal case but added: “Katharine has had a lot of support because obviously she’s a fantastic headteacher.” She said the government also supported Ms Birbalsingh when she set up the Michaela Community School in 2014, under the free school system.
She added: “Headteachers have a huge amount of accountability in our school system which is why we have Ofsted, because we need to have a check and balance on that, so it’s headteachers who decide what is right for their school, what the right policies are for their school, and we back their right to do that.”
Ms Birbalsingh has said the ban on prayer rituals was brought in against a backdrop of violence, intimidation and racial harassment of teachers last year, and it restored calm and order. But a pupil launched a High Court challenge to the ban. The judge has said he will deliver a ruling “as quickly as possible”.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC on Monday, Ms Keegan also admitted she could not guarantee the successful rollout of the government’s childcare overhaul but is “very confident” it will be delivered.
She said: “The only reason I say I can’t guarantee is strictly it’s tens and tens of thousands of businesses all across the country who are actually delivering it.”
The government has pledged to massively expand free childcare for working parents, but questions are growing over whether it can meet the pledge.
In the first phase of the new scheme, working parents of two-year-olds will get 15 hours of free childcare. This will be extended to working parents of all children older than nine months from September.
From September 2025 working parents of children under five will be entitled to 30 hours of free childcare per week.
Asked on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News whether she could guarantee that parents of nine month olds will be able to access state-funded childcare in September, Ms Keegan said: “You know what you cannot do is guarantee something in the future that you are not incontrol of all the bits.”
Some childcare providers have said they still did not know what funding they will receive for the scheme and some parents have said they are struggling to access the scheme.
Nursery bosses said the funding system for free childcare is so “baffling” that it is clear the government does not even understand it, and called for an overhaul of the funding system.
Ms Keegan was also asked which Ofsted rating she would grade this government, and did not give it the top grade of “outstanding”
Ofsted has a four point grading scale of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, and Inadequate.
When asked by Nick Ferrari how she would grade the Government's performance using the watchdog's system, she said: “I would say 'Good'. Often a lot of the things that we've delivered nobody ever talks about.”
Mrs Keegan added: “When you've gone from 68 per cent to 89 per cent Good or Outstanding schools. When you've gone from no apprenticeship system to one that's training 5.7 million people. I think you can look and say there's a lot that has been achieved.”
When asked to sum up the Government in one word, Ms Keegan said: “Delivering.”
She also hinted that the wording of Ofsted’s lowest grade - “inadequate” - could be changed. It comes after the death of headteacher Ruth Perry whose school was graded as inadequate. Campaigners want the one-word judgement system to be changed to a report-card style system.
Ms Keegan said: “There has been discussion about whether that’s the right word to use which I know the new Ofsted chief inspector is open to considering."
