The UK\u2019s largest teaching union on Saturday warned against pressuring schools into banning hijab for very young girls for fear of increasing backlash from the local communities. The National Education Union , which is debating the issue at a meeting in Brighton over the weekend, criticised the country\u2019s schools watchdog for interfering in the matter.<\/p>\n
The chief of the Office for Standards in Education, Children\u2019s Services and Skills Amanda Spielman has spoken out about her concerns over Muslim girls as young as five wearing the headscarf and suggested that school inspectors explore why they are doing so.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is a problem that Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty\u2019s chief inspector [of schools], speaks out on this in a way which I think is frankly very political,\u201d said Kevin Courtney, the joint general secretary of the NEU, at the opening of the NEU\u2019s annual conference yesterday.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople feeling so much pressure from Ofsted, our worry is that instead of consultation we will find schools saying: we are going to ban the hijab. And we think that would be very damaging to community relations. It\u2019s not a sensible place to go, so our guidance will be about how you have dialogue, respectful dialogue and dialogue based on love for one another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Courtney said that new guidance from the union would be issued to schools on developing uniform policies, making clear that headteachers should not take the decision but needed to reach an agreement with the local community.<\/p>\n
The comments come in the wake of controversy around St Stephen\u2019s School in east London\u2019s attempt to ban the hijab for very young girls. It led to complaints of bullying of the school\u2019s staff, including Indian-origin principal Neena Lall, and Spielman came out in support of Lall.<\/p>\n
But after heavy opposition from community leaders and abusive comments on social media, Lall was forced to withdraw the ban earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Spielman had earlier announced that Ofsted inspectors would ask young pupils themselves why they wore the hijab in an attempt to build a wider picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat individual Ofsted inspectors would ask individual Muslim girls why they were wearing the hijab, and then to imply that they were wearing the hijab because they had been sexualised, indicates somebody who isn\u2019t in touch with Muslim communities at all,\u201d Courtney said, as he tabled a motion to be debated by the NEU.<\/p>\n
The motion states that Spielman\u2019s statements \u201chave ramifications beyond the school gates and must be seen in the context of increased attacks on the Muslim community and particular stereotypes about Muslim girls and Muslim women\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ofsted branded the NEU\u2019s comments \u201cdisappointing\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s nothing political about ensuring that schools and parents aren\u2019t being subject to undue pressure by national or community campaign groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UK\u2019s largest teaching union on Saturday warned against pressuring schools into banning hijab for very young girls for fear of increasing backlash from the local communities. The National Education Union , which is debating the issue at a meeting in Brighton over the weekend, criticised the country\u2019s schools watchdog for interfering in the matter. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26583,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26581\/revisions\/26583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}