Your opinion of the Muslim pupil challenging Katharine Birbalsingh’s prayer ban at her Michaela Community School will be shaped by your instinctive sense of how the challenges of multiculturalism should be managed – especially those posed by Islam. Since around one in twelve children in British schools is of a Muslim background, this issue isn’t going away.
Should we enforce secularism, with religious differences subsumed in a single ethos? Or should we make allowances for faith’s demands, potentially undermining community cohesion and the comfort of those of other faiths and none? And if those allowances are made, are they the happy result of liberal tolerance, or a sad surrender to threats, down a path of least resistance?
Last year, The New European placed Birbalsingh on their ‘shit list’. ConservativeHome shall give her the credit she deserves. Despite one in four pupils taking free school meals, Michaela outperforms leading private schools. It ranks first out of almost 7,000 secondaries for improvement from primary level. In 2021, 82 per cent of leavers went to a Russell Group university.
Bibalsingh has achieved this through methods that have seen her branded ‘Britain’s strictest headmistress’. A self-proclaimed traditionalist; discipline is her watchword. Students walk silently between classes. Minor infractions are punished strongly (she calls detentions “an act of love”). Mobile phones are banned.
As an ex-teacher, I’m sympathetic. Michaela’s results are extraordinary, especially for a school with many pupils speaking English as a second language. Baroness Birbalsingh of Brent seems fitting. But one can both be enthusiastic about Michaela’s approach and probe its limits.
Birbalsingh has been taken to the High Court by a Muslim pupil over a newly imposed ban on prayers. Around half the school’s 700 pupils are Muslim. Last March, around 3 began praying in the school’s yard, and then 30. They used their blazers to kneel, in the absence of prayer mats.
According to the school’s defence, the rapid rise in Muslim pupils praying saw some of their co-religious peers being pressured. One child who had never previously worn a headscarf began to do so. Another dropped out of the choir after being told it was ‘haram’. Others were told they were ‘bad Muslims’ for not praying.
With tensions running high, Birbalsingh banned pupil prayer. Her decision came against what she calls “a backdrop of events including violence, intimidation, and appalling racial harassment of…teachers”. Bomb threats were made, a brick was put through a window, and thousands signed an online petition in opposition.
The ban proved effective in restoring order. But the pupil has sued, not only on the basis that the ban curtails her right to freedom of religion – enshrined by the ECHR – but that it is particularly discriminatory to Muslims. She wants to be allowed to pray for five minutes at lunchtime.
The Government outlined the current position in response to a recent online petition on this topic. There is “currently no legal requirement for schools to allow their pupils time within the school day to pray upon request”. Nor are schools “required to provide any pupil with a physical space…to conduct their prayers”.
However, as per the Equalities Act 2010, a school “should consider whether [preventing prayer] would constitute indirect discrimination against those who share protected characteristics”, which include religion. However, it is understood that it is not feasible for all schools to allow time and space for prayer. Schools must also consider the potential for disruption and promote community cohesion. In short, fudge it.
Birbalsingh touches on both points in a public statement. She claims she has “always been clear to parents and pupils” that the “restrictive building on Michaela” and “strict ethos that does not allow children to wander around…unsupervised” makes a prayer room impossible. Allowing pupils to pray would be disruptive. Open and shut? Not quite.
The headmistress goes on to muddy the waters, making clear that choosing to ban prayer is not only a practical choice but a philosophical one. At Michaela, she says, “all regions make sacrifices so that we can maintain a safe secular community”. Hindu families object to dinner plates touching eggs, and Christian families complain about Sunday revision sessions. All compromise, “so that we can live in harmony”. Sir Paul would be proud.
For Birbalsingh, multiculturalism succeeds “when we understand that every group must make sacrifices for the sake of the whole”. This is not secularism as muddling through but as a conscious unifying doctrine. Michaela’s methods cannot work if pupils put religion first. Want that Russell Group spot? Leave God at the door.
Readers might agree. Michaela’s results are self-explanatory, and other schools are available if pupils and parents believe attending compromises their faith. The 1944 Education Act mandates a daily act of Christian worship for maintained schools – now including academies – in a bung to the bishops by Rab Butler. Ofted gave up inspecting it 20 years ago, since 76 per cent of schools were not complying.
Britain’s Sea of Faith was once full. But even if we still have an established Church – watch this space – we are, in practice, a post-Christian country with substantial religious minorities. Is Birbalsingh’s muscular secularism the next step of our national evolution?
But this would be a profound shift – and impractical. There are many successful schools out there either religious or supportive of daily worship. Their results might not reach Michaela’s lofty heights. But Catholic schools, for example, outperform the national average and educate a higher-than-average number from ethnic minorities or deprived backgrounds. Two-fifths of their pupils are non-Catholics. Should they scrap God too?
Moreover, Michaela is wholly capable of conceding to religious needs. Pupils eat a range of pescetarian and vegetarian meals to satisfy Hindu and Muslim requirements. Many pupils wear headscarves. That a girl had begun wearing one seems to have been problematic because she hadn’t previously felt pressured.
That makes the underlying reason for the prayer ban more obvious. This was not so much muscular secularism as a policy choice, but a response to concerns about a divisive form of Islam.
Michaela’s plight is of piece with other recent rows over under-8s wearing the Hijab at St Stephen’s in Newham and a teacher at Batley Grammar showing a picture of Muhammed. Both schools produced uproar from Muslim parents and community groups. The Batley teacher remains in hiding.
Does Islam pose a particular problem in schools? Various illegal Islamic private schools were found by Ofsted to be dabbling with radicalisation and corporal punishment. But similar concerns have been raised about ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools. What about our 30 state-funded Muslim faith schools – amongst the country’s best performing?
Suggesting that Islam is particularly problematic would court the same anger as Birbalsingh’s prayer ban. Faith schools have freedom over religious education and admissions policy. Could we suggest Church of England, Catholic, or Jewish schools can be trusted with this freedom, but not Muslim ones? Would junking faith schools entirely – at considerable expense – be fairer?
Most Muslim parents will be the same as those of the vast majority of other faiths and none, interested in nothing more than their children receiving as good an education as possible. Many schools will come to a happy fudge – as mine did – where those wishing to pray can do so. Pupils can opt out of both collective religious services and RE lessons.
Enforcing secularism means importing France’s low-level war between Muslim pupils and educational authorities. We have a left-wing theocracy, not a separation of church and state. How many C of E schools are radicalising children via assemblies on the Good Samaritan?
As a Birbalsingh fan, it pains me that her ban could be discriminatory. But the girl’s demands are not unreasonable, even if Birbalsingh believes they will undermine Michaela’s remarkable approach.
But is she fronting a larger campaign? Reports suggest she was a particular troublemaker, who threatened to stab another girl and intimidated fellow pupils. What had she been hearing at home? Or online, in an age when Osama bin Laden has become a posthumous hit on TikTok?
Many would like to see Birbalsingh handed her P45. If the case succeeds, it would both undermine the principle that a headteacher can run her school as she chooses, and trigger a set of similar lawsuits.
Future cases might not always involve Muslim pupils. But this issue is most acute with Islam. Ray Honeyford casts a long shadow.