OFSTED’s chief denied that a girl at Durham Free School (DFS) was asked if she was “a virgin”, as he defended the inspectors who triggered its planned closure.

In evidence to MPs, Sir Michael Wilshaw said he had personally investigated allegations of “inappropriate questions” by his staff and had found them to be false.

Sir Michael also ridiculed claims – made in a national newspaper – of a “political agenda” to target Christian schools.

Pointing out that the inspectors at DFS had found “very poor behaviour, declining standards, a lot of bullying”, he said: “parents deserve better.”

Sir Michael defended his inspectors asking forceful questions to uncover homophobia, which has prompted many of the criticisms.

He told the education select committee: “If you approach a child and say ‘Is there homophobic bullying?’, they wouldn’t know what you are talking about

“But, if inspectors say ‘Are children calling each other gay here or lesbo here?’ – they would understand what that means.

“And there was very, very bad homophobic bullying going on in these schools.”

The committee’s questions came after both DFS, in Durham City, and Grindon Hall School, in Sunderland, received damning Ofsted reports last week.

Asked about criticism of both of those inspections, Sir Michael said: “We found no evidence to suggest that the inspectors used inappropriate language and terminology to these children.”

On claims of an “anti-Christian agenda”, he said “Absolutely not – we are going into schools in Birmingham, in Bradford, in Tower Hamlets, with children who are predominantly Muslim.”

And, asked about the campaign to save DFS, Sir Michael replied: “Parents always, even when schools are declining very badly, try to support the school.”

Meanwhile, the school hit back angrily at an MP’s claim that it had become a “haven for every crap teacher in the North-East”.

Pat Glass, the North West Durham MP, said a head teacher had told her that staff caught up in “competency procedures” – had been given new jobs at DFS.

But, in a statement on its website, the school described the allegation as “entirely baseless” and demanded an apology from the Labour MP, a former senior education officer.

It said it had “temporarily removed” teachers’ names from the website, “in order to protect the reputation of our staff, many of whom have had successful careers in outstanding schools in the past”.

And it insisted: “No staff at the school have left posts at other schools due to lack of competency.”

As part of its challenge to the closure order, the governors have demanded more information from Ofsted and the department for education to establish the “true picture of how the school has been treated”.