Kelly’s Eye
HAVE you heard of the Michaela Community School in north-west London? Under its remarkable headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh, pupils there emerge with better exam grades than most private schools which charge tens of thousands of pounds in fees for the privilege. By contrast, a quarter of Michaela’s pupils are on free school meals.
It recently ranked first in the country for raising attainment – defined as improving pupils’ life chances – out of 6,959 secondary schools.
Yet now Michaela is at the centre of a legal case, the outcome of which will have consequences far beyond its walls.A pupil who is Muslim (as are about half of its 700-strong intake) is suing the school for imposing a prayer ban and claiming discrimination.
The ban was brought in over concerns about growing segregation between religious groups after some Muslims began praying during lunch breaks.
Birbalsingh insists the school’s success is down to its secular approach, which means “every race, faith and group understands self-sacrifice for the betterment of the whole”.
There were stories of Muslim pupils who were not praying being intimidated into doing so.
Birbalsingh says that teachers enforcing the school rules have been threatened and racially harassed.
The pupil bringing the case is funded by public money – an estimated £100,000-150,000 in legal aid so far – and represented by a leading human rights barrister.
I bet lots of Muslim parents who want nothing to do with the extreme elements of their faith – which is why they sent their children to Michaela in the first place – are willing the school to win.
That’s because Muslims are no more of one mind than any other faith or group. If in doubt you might wonder why Muslim neighbours Iran and Pakistan are currently hurling missiles at one another.
Yet, like their black fellow citizens with whom they are lumped together under the patronising BAME label, that is how they are weaponised by the scourge of identity politics.
That ideology, while professing to do the opposite, deliberately fosters division in race, class and gender for its own political ends.
It is a groupthink pervading the heights of the legal, media, academic and even big business establishments – and their educational equivalent, which already loathes Birbalsingh for how she has achieved her stunning success.
All the more reason for the rest of us to support her.