There are 16,764 state-funded primary schools in England. Last weekend the Daily Heil singled out Kobi Nazrul school in Tower Hamlets for no other purpose than to let every racist in the English speaking world express an opinion on it, and sure enough Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s alter ego Tommy Robinson joined in.

The Heil waxes nostalgic about the good old days when the area it serves was overwhelmingly white – and I haven’t made this up.

“The inner city school sits in a quiet side street off the busy Commercial Road in Whitechapel – a district once synonymous with Jack the Ripper and the Kray twins and home to the nation’s true Cockneys.”

 It is a school I had dealings with and the article really got under my skin, mainly due to reading the comments underneath it because they were exactly the sort of racist pile-on the propagandists who wrote it hoped for.

I worked for a brief time repairing sewers and the atmosphere down there is a lot more fragrant than most of the 2300 plus outpourings of the Heil’s readers.

Here is a selection. The number in brackets indicates how many people approved of it.

• 5 Times we have voted against immigration. Now we need Reform. (286)
• shut it down ! If you don’t speak the language you shouldn’t even be here ! (222)
• And you can bet the food is halal. It should be banned in this Country! (130)

The Heil submitted a Freedom of Information request about the school, which seems like an odd thing to do when it is scandal free, well regarded by parents and, for what it’s worth, even Ofsted. Or maybe it is a perfectly rational thing to do when your business model is producing clickbait for racists.

The Heil has three problems with the school and the community it serves. The first is that 92.5 per cent of the children speak Bengali as their first language. The second is that no child in the school has English as a first language at home. The third is that the area around the school is visibly opposed to the genocide in Gaza. We can say with absolute certainty that a century ago the Polish, Russian and Lithuanian Jews in the area had a similar profile in terms of kids being to operate well in two or more languages.

Here is an anecdote about the school which illustrates why it is such a wonderful place and goes some way to explaining why not even the Daily Heil could find a parent willing to criticise it.

A while ago I was involved in trying to get a child admitted to Kobi Nazrul, though for family reasons he ended up going elsewere. He had just arrived from abroad with his parents and had a range of medical and mobility issues. The school’s instant response was to make him feel welcome and explain all the things they would do to make sure he was happy and successful there. It was a beautiful and inspiring thing to see happen. For me, it was exactly what an inclusive community school should do. The fact that this family was one of millions that have arrived in the area over centuries makes you feel part of a never-ending historical chain.

It is hard to get inside the heads of the sort of people whose prejudices are serviced by the Daily Heil. The fact that Labour, the Tories and Reform have identified them as the only voters who matter just validates their prejudices and makes Tommy Robinson’s job much easier.

Schools like Kobi Nazrul are gems to be treasured and defended.