A tale of two schools...

Unless you’re an educationalist, keen follower of politics, or live in north London, you might not have heard of Michaela Community School – until now.

It was opened in 2014 by Katharine Birbalsingh, a famous teacher who takes a strict approach but gets incredibly excellent results for her pupils.

On 16th April it came to wider attention because it won a High Court ruling enforcing its policy of not allowing pupils to pray during school time.

About half of the 700 pupils are Muslim and in March 2023 up to 30 students began praying in the school's yard. Pupils are not allowed to gather in groups of more than four, so the school introduced the ban due to concerns of a "culture shift" towards "segregation between religious groups and intimidation within the group of Muslim pupils."

A Muslim pupil went to court, using taxpayer funded legal aid (reported to cost ￡150,000), and argued that under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) she was having her religious freedom denied.

The judge dismissed her case because it was a secular school, and pupils, and their parents, knew this before joining it, they were welcome to go elsewhere. The point was also made that she could pray outside school time, that Islam allows for believers to catch up on their prayers.

A good result for common sense, it shows British schools shouldn’t be dictated to by a religious minority. It supports a headteacher, who gets some of the best exam results in the UK, against a divisive group of pupils and parents.

Contrast Michaela Community School with what happened at Batley Grammar School.

In 2021 a religious studies teacher was forced into hiding, where he’s been ever since, because he showed a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad during class.

Parts of the Koran are taken to mean that neither Allah nor Muhammad should be captured in an image and any attempt to do so is an insult.

At the time a large Muslim protest gathered outside the school, intimidating people to the point where it became a national story.?

On 25th March this year, an independent review, by Dame Sara Khan, was published which concluded:

• The teacher faced an online and offline "campaign of intimidation and abuse", leaving him feeling "incredibly distressed, suicidal and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder."
• Despite being cleared of any malicious intent the teacher was still "not considered a victim of crime" and missed out on support under the Victims' Code.
• Agencies involved failed to communicate any condemnation of those creating "an intimidatory and threatening climate."
• It found a disproportionate concern for not causing offence "to the religious sensibilities of those who, unaware of the facts, chose to engage in intimidation."
• It highlighted a "poor understanding of cohesion" where protesters were appeased to secure an end to the protests.
• The report warned of a wider cultural problem of "self-appointed community faith leaders aggressively interfering in teaching" at some Batley schools.

If this isn’t bad enough, the police, school trust and local council appear in denial, responding to the report with warm words or ignorance.

This last week an independent investigation by the Policy Exchange think-tank showed how the hard line Iranian regime are trying to influence UK politics through the Islamic Centre of England (ICEL) charity. The think-tank uses the Batley blasphemy protests as an example of how extreme Islamists are trying to enforce their view on others.

It’s clear that Islamic extremism isn’t just coming to the fore at the pro-Palestinian hate marches, or during the Rochdale by-election, it’s also surfacing in and around our schools.

There’s a battle raging from abroad and within the UK, Islamist forces trying to dismantle our Christian culture and British way of life.

Instead of ignoring, or denying this Islamist threat, as they are in and around Batley, our mainstream politicians, and us the wider public, need to wake up and act. We should all be a bit more like Katharine Birbalsingh and stand up for what’s right.