School ethos or school brand?

The amount of ink that has been spilled over the duty of schools to promote “fundamental British values” from the time they were introduced in the 2014 Ofsted inspection handbook to their burial beneath layers of attendant values in the 2021 handbook’s focus on “Personal Development” gives pause for thought – what’s so controversial about labelling values as British?

The emergence of this agenda in the moral panic that followed the Trojan Horse allegations in Birmingham in 2014 has recently been under the microscope again thanks to the New York Times’ podcast series on the issue.

Going into schools as part of a recent Templeton Foundation-funded project into young people’s values, there are plenty of flag-bedecked wall displays on the British values that have clearly been gathering dust since that moment in 2014.