Prayer ban head teacher queries strength of legal aid against her
When a pupil challenged a prayer ban, the secular ethos behind Michaela’s success was put at stake
THE head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh has questioned the level of legal aid awarded to a Muslim pupil who lost a court battle over her school’s prayer ban.
Ms Birbalsingh, who is known as Britain’s strictest head teacher, won a legal challenge brought by a pupil who claimed the prayer restrictions at Michaela Community School in Brent, west London, were discriminatory.
The High Court ruled that the prayer ban was lawful and justified as “a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims” of the school.
Michaela introduced the prayer ban in March last year after about 30 pupils began praying in the playground.
Commenting on the judgment, Ms Birbalsingh said: “Can it be right for a family to receive £150,000 of taxpayerfunded legal aid to bring a case like this?”
A spokesman for lawyers supporting the pupil said the legal aid costs were “a fraction” of the sum quoted by Ms Birbalsingh.
Senior Tory MPS also criticised the use of legal aid to fund the pupil’s claim. Sir Jacob Rees-mogg, the MP for North East Somerset, said: “Legal aid is there to protect people who couldn’t otherwise get proper representation for cases that must have a seriousness threshold.
“Legal aid is not there to fund politics by legal means, legal aid is not there to fund lawfare. If people want to fight political battles in the courts, they should fund them themselves.” Sir John Hayes, chairman of the Common Sense Group of backbench Tory MPS, said the legal aid funding for the case was an “outrage”.
Legal aid is the system of public funding used to help meet the costs of legal advice and representation in court. It is administered by the Legal Aid Agency, an executive agency of the Ministry of Justice. Judicial review cases are typically considered to be in scope of civil legal aid services.
‘Racism fuels the belief that ethnic minorities cannot think and choose for themselves’
IN ONE of the most deprived areas of London, parents compete to get their children into a state school run by Katharine Birbalsingh, known as Britain’s strictest head teacher.
Michaela Community School, housed in a seven-storey office block in Brent, has transformed the lives of thousands of children. Its strict ethos and teaching yields top GCSE and A- level results which open the door to Russell Group university places for the majority of its leavers.
Now, Ms Birbalsingh has a message for prospective parents: “If parents do not like what Michaela is, they do not need to send their children to us”.
She made the comment yesterday after Michaela won a legal battle with a Muslim pupil who had challenged the school over its decision to ban prayer rituals when a growing group of pupils praying in a yard caused alarm about threats to safety and the school’s secular ethos.
However, a pupil’s mother, who wants to send her second child to Michaela in September, has sent a letter to the school’s lawyers threatening legal action over a separate issue at the school, Ms Birbalsingh revealed. Ms Birbalsingh said in a statement yesterday that “selfsacrifice” is required for multiculturalism to succeed at the school. “Parents, knowing this, have the freedom to make informed choices. This is who we are.”
Pupils at Michaela move between cramped classrooms and corridors with lines running down the middle to ensure they walk down one side, in single file and in silence. Any child walking past a teacher is required to make eye contact and say, “Good morning, Sir”, or “Good afternoon, Mmiss”. There is a strict ban on using a narrow staircase to go the wrong way.
The school is oversubscribed, with parents fighting for places because of its academic success and approach to discipline. The mother of a pupil who took the school to court over its prayer policy this year was no exception. She joined a waiting list for the school after missing out on a place. The pupil, who cannot be named, said her mother was drawn to Michaela’s exam results and strict rules, which would keep her safe.
However, the relationship turned sour after the mother and pupil realised the school did not have space to accommodate a prayer room. The mother had not attended the school’s open days, nor its welcome events for new pupils, where she could have expected to learn more about the school’s policies. She assumed that prayers were something her daughter would do when the time was right for her, the High Court heard.
Her daughter told the court that she and her friends knew they should be praying as they were getting older and reaching puberty. She said that one of the core “pillars” of her faith is undertaking five daily prayers, including Duhr, a midday prayer.
Lunch break at the school includes a 25-minute sitting during which pupils stand beside their chairs and chant poetry, including If by Rudyard Kipling. A teacher sets a topic of conversation, such as books or current affairs, and pupils are not allowed to discuss anything else. For the remaining 25 minutes of break time, pupils can play in groups of up to four in the yard, work in the computer room, or attend lunchtime clubs.
The pupil behind the legal challenge wanted to spend 25 minutes of her lunch break performing Duhr. She said that in the autumn term of 2022 and at the start of term in 2023 “lots of children were talking amongst themselves about the possibility of praying at the school, but, with one possible exception, none of them raised it or acted on this”.
Pupils were moved to act after the head teacher of an Islamic school visited Michaela and told the pupil and her friends that he had heard they were not encouraged to ask questions.
The pupil told the court that she believed the head teacher also spoke to another group of girls who told him there was no prayer room, and he suggested that they could pray in the school playground. While she was considering what to do, other pupils began praying in the yard using prayer mats.
Ms Birbalsingh said she did not intervene at first, as the ritual was not against school rules at the time.
However, within days, about 20 pupils had begun to group together to pray in the yard, in a position which made them highly visible from the street.
Pupils had started to bring in prayer mats, which Michaela claimed was the first co-ordinated attempt by children to undermine the school’s rules.
About a week after the first pupil had been seen praying in the yard, a teacher told the enlarged group to put the prayer mats away because they were against school policy.
Two pupils, including the girl who later brought the legal challenge, answered back, and the teacher said she found the level of contempt towards her was shocking. The pupil behind the legal challenge was suspended for two days.
The school claimed that on the same day, pupils praying at lunch in the yard began intimidating other Muslim pupils who had chosen to eat rather than fast during Ramadan.
The following day, about 30 pupils were praying in the yard. Ms Birbalsingh told the court she had been told by a teacher that one of the Muslim pupils who had not previously worn a headscarf had been intimidated into doing so, while harassment of Muslim pupils who were not fasting during lunch increased.
Four of the pupils were given exclusions for refusing to respond to a teacher when spoken to, arguing that they should not be interrupted while praying. Meanwhile, a division was developing in the yard between Muslim and non-muslim pupils, according to Ms Birbalsingh, which she worried was undermining the school’s culture of all races and religions mixing and being friends with each other.
On the same day, an online petition was launched which accused the teacher, who had first challenged pupils for bringing in prayer mats, of “disgusting, Islamophobic behaviour”.
The petition was signed by at least 4,000 people. Abuse of the teacher, who is black, included references to the Klu Klux Klan, slavery and lynching, and comparisons with monkeys, in comments posted on the online petition.
Some people called for Ms Birbalsingh to be dismissed and there were protests outside the school. As well as receiving abusive emails, the school received calls from members of the public accusing the school of disrespecting Islam by requiring children to pray outside in dirty and wet conditions rather than allowing them to pray inside in a prayer room.
The following weekend, an email was sent to the school which claimed that bombs had been planted at the site. A subsequent police sweep found no evidence of explosives. However, after consulting with the chairman and vice chairman of governors over how to keep the school, teachers and children safe, Ms Birbalsingh said they agreed to ban prayer rituals. The ban was upheld after a subsequent meeting of the governing body.
The school felt it needed to employ bodyguards to protect teachers. At the end of March, a brick was thrown through the window of the home of one of the teachers, and glass bottles were thrown into the school yard. The school said that after lawyers were instructed and the online petition was removed in April, the abusive emails began to slow.
Ms Birbalsingh found that after the Easter holidays, the school “returned to the peaceful and successfully integrated community that it had been prior to the events of the previous term”, and no children sought to conduct prayer rituals.
The pupil behind the legal challenge received a second exclusion after it was reported by other pupils that she had been “openly talking about wanting to do harm to the school”.
Mr Justice Linden, handing down his ruling yesterday, said the second exclusion had been made unfairly because the pupil had not been asked for her version of events before a decision was made.
However, he backed Michaela on all other grounds of the legal challenge, finding that the prayer ritual ban did not “interfere” with the pupil’s freedom to manifest her religious beliefs. He found that the prayer policy was “a proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aims” of the school and was therefore justified.
The disadvantage to Muslim pupils was outweighed by the aims which it seeks to promote in the interests of the school community as a whole, including Muslim pupils, he added.
In her statement after the ruling, Ms Birbalsingh said the school has faced an onslaught of opposition for its strict rules and traditional values, accusing critics of thinking that “ethnic minority families cannot possibly know what they want and have chosen and continue to choose for their children”.
She said: “A deep-seated progressivist racism fuels the condescending belief that ethnic minorities cannot think and choose for themselves. It is what has allowed a particular kind of bullying identity politics to take such a grip of our country.”
Last year, Michaela achieved the highest Progress 8 score in the country, which means that on average, pupils at the school achieved more than two grades higher than they would have at an average secondary school.
Ms Birbalsingh does not appear to be concerned about future demand for places at Michaela, including from hundreds of Muslim families “who love our school”.