Muslim schools

“Segregation or no segregation, why on earth should we accept the right of a school in the UK, state-funded no less, to espouse this kind of ethos to begin with?”

Last week the court of appeal ruled that a Muslim state school in Birmingham has been acting unlawfully by segregating boys and girls in all areas of school life. The decision came after Ofsted condemned such segregation as unlawful discrimination, and overturns a previous decision by the High Court which found in favour of the school.

The court’s ruling is an interesting and complicated one, primarily because it establishes that such segregation discriminates against girls and boys equally, by denying each the benefits that come from socialising with the opposite sex. Understandably, this has led to (misguided) questions about the status of single-sex schools, which have an exemption from the Equality Act 2010 allowing them to discriminate on grounds of gender.

All of this has been well-documented, however, so what we focus on here is the dissenting opinion of the court, given by Lady Justice Gloster.

Unlike her two fellow judges, it was Justice Gloster’s view that the segregation of girls and boys, enforced as it was for ‘religious reasons’, should have been deemed as discriminatory against girls specifically. Ofsted did make this argument, in fact, as did Southall Black Sisters and Inspire, the two organisations who intervened in the case. But it was rejected by the majority opinion of the court, and the appeal was therefore only upheld on the more limited grounds outlined above. This was an oversight, as even a quick read of Lady Justice Gloster’s dissenting opinion demonstrates. This opinion needs little commentary, so here are some highlights.

Noting that ‘the majority in this court…takes the view that there is no evidence to support the submission that the practical consequences of segregation in this case cause a greater detriment girls rather than boys’, she states:

‘First, I do not agree with the majority, or with the Judge, that there was no evidence of greater practical detriment, or potential detriment, to girls, as opposed to boys, as a result of the regime of sex segregation in operation at the School. It is correct, as was accepted by Ofsted, that the June 2016 Inspection Report does not suggest that girl pupils receive a different, or qualitatively poorer, level of education than boys, or that the former achieved worse examination results or other educational outcomes than the boys. But, in my view, in order to judge the impact of the segregation regime, one has to assess its operation in its actual context in this particular school. And the picture disclosed in the evidence clearly demonstrates that the environment at the School, including, and underlined by, the segregation regime, had a real potential for exposing girls to greater detriment than the boys.’

The evidence she refers to, by the way, includes books found by Ofsted at the school that contained ‘messages about the subjugation of women’ and ‘included derogatory comments about, and the incitement of violence towards, women.’

In any case, Justice Gloster continues:

‘One does not need to be an educationalist, a sociologist or a psychiatrist to conclude that a mixed sex school which, whether intentionally or otherwise, tolerates an environment where extreme and intolerant contemporary views about the role and physical subservience of women, and the entitlement of men physically to dominate and chastise them, are on display, or available to read, in the school library; [and] whose teachers approve the expression by the pupils of gender stereotyped views about the roles of women as homemakers and child minders and the role of men as the breadwinners…is a school where a strict sex segregation policy subjects girls to a greater risk of extreme and intolerant views and is likely to reinforce or create misogynist attitudes amongst the boy pupils towards them.’

Quite. She goes on:

‘In my judgment, once the principle is accepted, as it was by the Judge (and the majority in this court), that, as a generality, men exercise more influence and power in society than women, and that persistent gender inequalities remain in the employment market, evidence is not required to establish that an educational system, which promotes segregation in a situation where girls are not allowed to mix with boys or to be educated alongside them, notwithstanding they are studying the same curriculum and spending their days on the same single school site, is bound to endorse traditional gender stereotypes that preserve male power, influence and economic dominance. And the impact of that is inevitably greater on women than on men. One does not need to have been educated at a women’s college at a co-educational university, at a time when women were still prohibited from being members of all-male colleges, to take judicial notice of the career opportunities which women are even today denied, simply because they are prevented from participating in hierarchical male networking groups, whether in the social, educational or employment environment.’

Finally, she concludes:

‘In my judgment, it is not difficult to conclude that in such circumstances, and against the background of the past history and current reality of gender relations, not only generally in UK society, but also in the cultural and community context of this particular School, segregation on grounds of sex necessarily endorses gender stereotypes about the inferiority of women or their perceived place in a society where predominantly men exercise power.’

One wonders how anyone could argue with any of this. And yet, none of it made it into the majority opinion of the court. The education system is all the worse for it.

Irrespective of what the law now says, however, the questions we have to ask ourselves go well beyond the appropriateness of segregation within such schools. Because segregation or no segregation, why on earth should we accept the right of a school in the UK, state-funded no less, to espouse this kind of ethos to begin with?

FSA team

“Every single month, and it tends to be more regular even than that, a new story appears of a school in England, for reasons of religion, badly failing its pupils”

Last week Ofsted’s Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw sent the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan a letter expressing his concern about the ‘urgent and escalating’ problems caused by unregistered faith schools. As with his previous letters on this issue, Sir Michael focused primarily on Muslim schools, in line with Ofsted’s clear policy of prioritising the Government’s ‘Prevent’ and Counter-Extremism strategies in its work.

Unlike his previous letters, however, this latest missive rightly points out that problems are not simply confined to unregistered Muslim schools operating illegally and outside of the system, but to fully registered independent Muslim schools too.

This is not before time.

In January of this year, for instance, an independent Muslim school in Tower Hamlets, east London, was reported for having books in its library that ‘promote inequality of women and punishments, including stoning to death, which are illegal in Britain’ and which ‘undermine the active promotion of the rule of British law and respect for other people’.

In February, a similar school in Luton was found to be ‘undermining British values’ as a result of its ‘unequal treatment of girls and boys’. Not only were girls found to ‘not have the same access to laboratory facilities that the boys have’, but they were also ‘limited to knitting and sewing’ in design and technology classes.

In March, a private Muslim school in Dewsbury was investigated for teaching an ‘extreme form of Islam’ which, according to Sky News, included the distribution of literature which ‘warn[ed] Muslims not to adopt British customs’  and claimed that ‘Jews are engaged in a conspiracy to take over the world’.

In April, a school visited by inspectors was reported to be segregating male and female staff and governors during meetings ‘through the use of a dividing screen across the middle of the room’, something which Sir Michael also wrote to the Education Secretary about so as to highlight the fact that similar policies appear to be in place at a number of other independent schools around the country.

In May, inspectors moved to shut down a school in Staffordshire after being alerted to the fact that children were being put ‘at risk of exposure to extremism and radicalisation’. Similar action was reported in relation to illegal schools in London, Birmingham, Luton, and Wolverhampton.

In June, Ofsted reported that at a school in Birmingham inspectors had discovered ‘a large number of copies of a leaflet containing highly concerning and extremist views, such as “Music, dancing and singing are acts of the devil and prohibited”’. The same school was previously criticised for the segregation of male and female governors.

By now, you get the picture. Every single month, and it tends to be more regular even than that, a new story appears of a school in England, for reasons of religion, badly failing its pupils. And this is by no means a problem exclusive to Muslim schools. A similar exercise could just as easily have been carried out with regard to Christian or Jewish schools, as has been evidenced by the previous blog posts uploaded to this site.

It’s also worth saying that for every school mentioned here, there are clearly a number of Muslim schools that are delivering an education with which, rightly or wrongly, Ofsted have no problem. The point, though, is that in any system which allows schools to be subject to so significant a degree of religious influence, as our system does, offences are going to be committed and they are going to be committed often. It is inevitable.

It is therefore clear that whilst the Government must of course continue to pursue a counter-extremism strategy – and in doing so it naturally justified in focussing its attention predominantly on Muslim schools –engaging in a game of ‘faith’ school whack-a-mole, which deals only with problems as and when they arise, can never be successful. If it really wants to solve the problem of extremism and intolerance in the classroom, it must be proactive and widen its scope, acknowledging once and for all that dismantling the freedoms afforded within the ‘faith’ school sector as a whole is the only way forward.

FSA team