Britain’s strictest headteacher: I was forced to stop Muslim prayers after teachers were racially harassed.
Katharine Birbalsingh faces High Court challenge from Muslim pupil over ban enforced at Michaela Community School.
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Louisa Clarence-Smith, EDUCATION EDITOR
Katharine Birbalsingh has said she was forced to ban Muslim prayers after teachers were racially harassed.
The school leader, known as Britain’s strictest head teacher, is facing a High Court challenge from a Muslim pupil over the prayer policy at Michaela Community School.
Commenting on the row for the first time, she warned that “multiculturalism can only succeed” when every group makes sacrifices “for the sake of the whole”.
In a statement shared on Wednesday morning, Ms Birbalsingh said the school’s governing body decided to stop prayer rituals when some pupils started them “against a backdrop of events including violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers”.
Michaela school is facing a legal challenge from a pupil, who cannot be named, over Ms Birbalsingh’s decision to introduce the ban in March last year.
The high-performing state school in Brent, north-west London, has around 700 pupils, about half of whom are Muslim. It is known for its strict approach to discipline, including silence in corridors and a ban on smartphones.
On Wednesday, a High Court heard that the school had taken action on prayers because of concerns about a “culture shift” over “segregation between religious groups and intimidation within the group of Muslim pupils”.
Jason Coppel KC, for the school trust, said: “These were very difficult days for the school, with tensions running high.”
He said that it is “hard to see how matters would have been improved by taking more and more disciplinary action”.
The school’s actions were based on teachers’ conversations with pupils over certain incidents, such as hearing about a Muslim girl who had dropped out of the school choir because she was told it was “haram”, or forbidden, he added.
“A number of children had been told that they were “bad Muslims” for not praying and had begun to pray,” Mr Coppel said in his written arguments.
He told the court that the school is “exceptionally successful” academically, “highly oversubscribed”, “aggressively” promotes integration, is run with “military precision” and uses an “ultra-strict enforcement of prescribed behavioural rules”.
Prayer policies ‘restored order’
Ms Birbalsingh said the decision to ban prayer rituals “restored calm and order to the school”.
She said: “We have always been clear to parents and pupils that when they apply to Michaela that because of our restrictive building combined with our strict ethos that does not allow children to wander around the school unsupervised, we cannot have a prayer room.”
She added: “We believe it is wrong to separate children according to religion or race, and that it is our duty to protect all of our children and provide them with an environment which is free from bullying, intimidation or harassment.
“Multiculturalism can only succeed when we understand that every group must make sacrifices for the sake of the whole.”
Michaela school was ranked top in the country last year for “Progress 8”, a measure of how much a secondary school has helped pupils improve since primary school.
Ms Birbalsingh said that to achieve its results, the school “must be a place where children buy into something they all share and that is bigger than themselves: our country”.
Pupils used playground to pray
About 30 pupils began praying in the school’s “wet” and “dirty” yard in March last year, using blazers to kneel as they were not permitted to bring in prayer mats, the hearing at the High Court was told.
The court heard the school was targeted on social media with “threats of violence”, abuse, “false” allegations of Islamophobia, and a “bomb hoax”, but that the situation had since “calmed”.
The pupil said the school’s stance on prayer was “the kind of discrimination that makes religious minorities feel alienated from society”, a judge was told.
Her lawyers claim the prayer ban “uniquely” affects the Muslim faith over other religions due to its ritualised nature and rules around prayer.
Conservative MPs expressed support for Ms Birbalsingh on Wednesday. Liz Truss, former Prime Minister, wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “We need more schools like Michaela”. She said Ms Birbalsingh “must be allowed to maintain the ethos of the school and prevail in this case”.
Miram Cates, MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said: “Michaela is an outstanding school that offers so many opportunities to its pupils. Their success is evident not only in the academic results but also the happiness of the students. Their ethos of equal treatment for all as part of a unified school community is entirely justified and one that many others should seek to emulate.”
Katharine Birbalsingh’s statement in full:
We are in court to defend the culture and ethos of Michaela, and the decisions the governors have taken to maintain a successful and stable learning environment where children of all races and religions can thrive. We want our multi-cultural and multi-faith community to flourish. Ours is a happy and respectful secular school where every race, faith and group understands self-sacrifice for the betterment of the whole. We are one big Michaela family.
Michaela is rated Outstanding by Ofsted and has a unique culture that turns out young people with exceptional character. Our pupils achieve superb exam grades – including the highest ever recorded progress at GCSE level in a state-funded school - which help them win places at some of the best universities in the world. We are extremely proud of what we do to transform the lives of young people, many of whom are from disadvantaged backgrounds. To achieve all this, our school must be a place where children of all races and religions buy into something they all share and that is bigger than themselves: our country.
We have a large number of Muslim pupils. Their positive experiences have helped grow the number of Muslim pupils at the school by 50 per cent. My own grandmother was Muslim. But the Governing Body had to take the decision to stop prayer rituals when some pupils started them, against a backdrop of events including violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers.
Our decision restored calm and order to the school. We have always been clear to parents and pupils when they apply to Michaela that because of our restrictive building combined with our strict ethos that does not allow children to wander around the school unsupervised, we cannot have a prayer room.
At Michaela, those from all religions make sacrifices so that we can maintain a safe secular community. Some Jehovah’s Witness families have objected to Macbeth as a set GCSE text. Some Christian families have asked that we do not hold our GCSE revision sessions on Sundays. Some Hindu families have objected to dinner plates touching eggs. And our Muslim families have signed up to the school knowing that we do not have a prayer room. We all eat vegetarian food so that we can break bread together at lunch where children are not divided according to race or religion. We all make our sacrifices so that we can live in harmony.
We believe it is wrong to separate children according to religion or race, and that it is our duty to protect all of our children and provide them with an environment which is free from bullying, intimidation and harassment.
Multiculturalism can only succeed when we understand that every group must make sacrifices for the sake of the whole. We allow our children freedoms of all sorts, as long as those freedoms do not threaten the happiness and success of the whole school community. Our children, whatever their background, are British. As a school, we celebrate what we have in common so that the extraordinary diversity of cultures that we have under our roof can succeed.
I will never separate children according to race and religion. DT.
