Bullying drives Muslims to home-schooling

More families are choosing to educate their children at home in an attempt to stop bullying, research finds

MIDDLE-CLASS Muslim parents are home-schooling their children to prevent them being bullied in class, research has found.

Ofsted has raised concerns about a rise in home-schooling in the UK, suggesting that it could be used as a cover for the radicalisation of children.

However, research has suggested that Muslim families are actually pulling their children out of schools because they are being bullied, including being called paedophiles and terrorists by other children.

The paper, by academics at the University of Portsmouth and Birmingham, found that racism was the most commonly cited reason for parents to pull their children out of school.

It warned that families who did this “were now more likely to be marginalised in a wider discourse about the threat of Muslim families to British life”, even if they had no religious motivation in taking their child out of school.

One case study, of a family living in the West Midlands, involved a university lecturer and primary school teacher who removed both their children from school after their 10-year-old son was repeatedly called “Bin Laden” by fellow pupils and was attacked by children who called him “a terrorist and a paedo”.

The father said that the Bin Laden incident had been “my tipping point” for deciding to home-school his children. The report said concerns about the “Trojan Horse” affair, an alleged plan to promote Islamist teaching in Birmingham, had left Muslim families feeling “threatened by society around them”.

Ofsted has since raised concerns about a “loophole” that allows parents to pull their children out of school without telling the local authority, which could allow parents to send their children to illegal schools promoting hardline Islamist values.

The Muslim Council of Britain said: “Racist bullying and discrimination of Muslim children has been a serious concern for a long time, and stories of homeschooling as a result are not unusual.”

A spokesman for Ofsted said: “It is unacceptable that any family should feel they have no choice but to home educate their child because they are being bullied at school.

“Schools bring together children from a wide range of backgrounds, so it is important that they work hard to unify pupils and promote equality.”

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: “Intimidation or bullying of any kind is abhorrent and completely unacceptable. Schools should be safe places. We have been working with religious groups…to strengthen guidance on race or faith-related bullying.”