Hazel Pulley said Parkfield Community School suspended the teachings following “frantic phone calls” from the Department for Education (DfE). “The DfE wanted the protests to stop. They wanted it out of the press,” said Ms. Pulley, head of the trust which runs the school. The DfE is “working intensively with the school and parents,” it said. Ms. Pulley also urged new Prime Minister Boris Johnson to step in and guide headteachers clearer or risk further divisions in communities. Parkfield’s No Outsiders equality program, which encourages children to accept differences in religions, families, and relationships, was suspended in March amid angry protests at the school gates.
Protesters stated the subject matter contradicted the Islamic faith and that primary-age child were too young to be aware of same-sex relationships. Hazel Pulley said Parkfield Community School suspended the teachings following “frantic phone calls” from the Department for Education (DfE). “The DfE wanted the protests to stop. They wanted it out of the press,” said Ms. Pulley, head of the trust which runs the school. The DfE is “working intensively with the school and parents,” it said. Ms. Pulley also urged new Prime Minister Boris Johnson to step in and guide headteachers clearer or risk further divisions in communities.
Parkfield’s No Outsiders equality program, which encourages children to accept differences in religions, families, and relationships, was suspended in March amid angry protests at the school gates. Protesters stated the subject matter contradicted the Islamic faith and that primary-age child were too young to be aware of same-sex relationships. “I don’t think this had ever happened in schools in our country before where parents would stand outside a school and shout using megaphones to keep children out. “It worried me because I felt that it was empowering parents to realize that if you shout and scream outside a school or [, there’s] something you don’t agree with, you can stop it, but it also made it look like the school was doing something wrong, which it wasn’t.”
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The BBC has seen a letter to Birmingham MP Jess Phillips in which Schools Minister Nick Gibb states: “I am clear that at no point did officials from the department pressure the school into pausing or stopping the No Outsiders program.” The Department for Education said in a statement: “Any suggestion that the dispute should be kept out of the media was not an attempt to silence the school, but a bid to bring an end to protests, encourage consultation, and ensure tensions weren’t further inflamed by sensationalist coverage.”
