The Government was given a timely reminder this week by the standards watchdog, Ofsted, that – while it may have presided over an improvement in primary school reading standards – there is still much work to be done. Mums in burkas come.” The imam from the local mosque sends his four children to the school. “The moral values we share are celebrated here,” he tells Donaldson.. Head teachers in some of the most deprived inner-city schools are thwarting a government plan to stretch the brightest pupils, inspectors say today.

According to Ofsted, they believe it is “divisive” to single out the brightest pupils ­ and are spending the money on new programmes that benefit all pupils instead.Today’s report, on the Government’s Excellence in Cities programme for primary schools, says: “Schools that believed that the provision for gifted and talented pupils was inequitable diluted the allocated resources.”One headteacher told inspectors: “The gifted and talented initiative is divisive and, at this stage in my career, I don’t feel threatened by league tables and targets. I am concentrating on the whole child.”Under the programme, schools in tough urban areas can get extra cash for master-classes for their top 5 to 10 per cent of pupils, mentors to help struggling pupils and schemes to improve behaviour. The programme benefits 1,159 schools in 74 local education authorities.The report says the programme is helping pupils in disadvantaged areas escape the cycle of poverty. The number of pupils reaching the required standard in English and maths national curriculum tests for 11-year-olds is improving at a faster rate than the national average. It has also improved attendance rates at five times more than the national average.However, it warns that teachers in one in seven of the participating schools are reluctant to accept that higher academic standards are attainable This is the second attack on teachers by Ofsted this week. Yesterday a report said poor teaching was to blame for thousands of primary school pupils failing to learn how to read by the age of 11.According to the report: “The additional focus [in these schools] on higher-attaining pupils was perceived as inequitable and, in a minority of schools, there was a pervasive culture of blame.

The school celebrates all the festivals of the major religions but the holy nativity forms the centrepiece of the end-of-term service in the church, which features readings and carols.”Children from many faiths play Joseph, Mary and the angels,” she says, “and the church is absolutely packed. “It’s not so much a celebration as an illustration of what other faiths believe,” he says.’MORAL VALUES ARE CELEBRATED HERE’St John’s Primary School in Reading, Berkshire, is a church school in every sense – a Church of England foundation built round a courtyard with a church on one side. Yet its 240 pupils come from a variety of faiths, from Muslims to Sikhs to Buddhists, and fewer than half are Christian.”We have a huge respect for other faiths and cultures,” says Maggie Donaldson, the head. But one class will present a little nativity play in assembly this week, just as another presented one on Hanukkah last week.Nigel Baynes, the head, considers it an important part of education for children to learn about the main religions, and says parents are keen to come and watch their children perform. How you follow that is up to you.” No parents had objected or withdrawn their children, he says.Christianity plays a less prominent part at Somerville Infant and Junior School in Birmingham – not surprisingly, because 99.9 per cent of the 730 pupils are Muslim. Christians are the biggest group, but there are large numbers of Muslims (including the local imam’s daughter) and Hindus as well.

“But we’re doing a whole-school nativity play,” says Paul Tuffin, the head, proudly. “We’re showing how they celebrate Christmas all around the world.”At assemblies today and tomorrow, narrators will tell the Bible story, while individual classes come on and perform Christmas songs from different countries, and the whole performance ends with a traditional tableau – tea towels and all. “It’s at the forefront of our celebration of faith,” says Tuffin, “of a being beyond us. The only problem would arise, he says, if children were asked to portray the son of God.At Southfields School in Coventry, an inner-city primary with 180 pupils speaking 28 different languages, no faith is in the majority.