Katharine Birbalsingh has said she was forced to ban Muslim prayers after teachers were racially harassed.
The school leader, known as Britain’s strictest headteacher, is being challenged in the High Court by a Muslim student over the prayer policy at Michaela Community School.
Commenting on the row, she warned for the first time that “multiculturalism can only succeed” if each group makes sacrifices “for the sake of the whole.”
In a statement shared on Wednesday morning, Ms Birbalsingh said the school’s governing body had decided to stop the prayer rituals when some students started them “against a backdrop of events such as violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers”.
The Michaela School is facing a legal challenge from a student, who cannot be named, over Ms Birbalsingh’s decision to introduce the ban in March last year.
The high-performing public school in Brent, north-west London, has around 700 pupils, around half of whom are Muslim. It is known for its strict approach to discipline, including silence in the corridors and a ban on smartphones.
Prayer policy ‘restored order’
Ms Birbalsingh said the decision to ban prayer rituals had “restored peace and order to the school”.
She said: “We have always been clear to parents and pupils that if they apply to Michaela, we cannot have a prayer room due to our restrictive building combined with our strict ethos which does not allow children to wander around the school unsupervised.”
She added: “We believe it is wrong to segregate children on the basis of religion or race, and that it is our duty to protect all our children and provide them with an environment free from bullying, harassment or intimidation .
“Multiculturalism can only succeed if we understand that each group must make sacrifices for the sake of the whole.”
Michaela School topped the country’s rankings last year for ‘Progress 8’, a measure of how much a secondary school has helped students improve since primary school.
Ms Birbalsingh said that to achieve results, the school “must be a place where children buy something they all share and that is bigger than themselves: our country”.
Students used the playground to pray
About 30 students began praying in the school’s “wet” and “dirty” courtyard in March last year, using blowers to kneel because they were not allowed to bring prayer mats, the hearing was told. Supreme Court told.
The court heard that the school had been the target of “threats of violence”, abuse, “false” accusations of Islamophobia and a “bomb hoax” on social media, but that the situation had since “calmed down”.
The student said the school’s stance on prayer is “the kind of discrimination that makes religious minorities feel alienated from society,” a judge was told.
Her lawyers argue that the prayer ban “uniquely” affects the Muslim faith compared to other religions because of the ritual nature and rules surrounding prayer.
Katharine Birbalsingh’s full statement:
We stand in court to defend Michaela’s culture and ethos, and the decisions the governors have made to maintain a successful and stable learning environment in which children of all races and religions can thrive. We want our multicultural and multifaith community to flourish. Our school is a happy and respectful secular school where every race, creed 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 produces young people of exceptional character. Our students achieve excellent exam grades – including the highest ever progress at GCSE level at a state-funded school – helping them win places at some of the best universities in the world. We are immensely proud of what we do to transform the lives of young people, many of whom come 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 students. Their positive experiences have helped increase the number of Muslim students at the school by 50 percent. My own grandmother was Muslim. But the Governing Body had to make the decision to stop the prayer rituals when some students started them, against the backdrop of events such as violence, intimidation and terrible racial harassment of our teachers.
Our decision restored peace and order to the school. We have always made it clear to parents and students when registering with Michaela that due to 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, people from all faiths make sacrifices so that we can maintain a safe secular community. Some families of Jehovah’s Witnesses have objected to Macbeth as a set GCSE text. Some Christian families have asked that our GCSE review sessions not be held on Sundays. Some Hindu families have objected to plates touching the eggs. And our Muslim families have registered with 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 the children are not divided by race or religion. We all make our sacrifices so that we can live in harmony.
We believe that it is wrong to separate children based on religion or race, and that it is our duty to protect all our children and provide them with an environment free from bullying, harassment and intimidation.
Multiculturalism can only succeed if we understand that each group must make sacrifices for the sake of the whole. We grant our children all kinds of freedoms, as long as those freedoms do not threaten the happiness and success of the entire 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 we have under our roof can succeed.
I will never separate children based on race and religion.