To think that the mother/daughter duo who took Michaela to court should face some natural consequences?

We certainly should NOT be dismissing the bullying and intimidation in this context. This is one step away from vigilante action!

This is pivotal to the court case.
The children could have continued undisturbed in quiet prayer in groups less than four (as per usual school rules) had this not happened.

Its a secular school - the very point of such a thing is to give young people a broad education so they can learn independent thinking skills.

The child could catch up with their prayers or move to a school more suited to them.

Pupils observing their own religion would not change any school from secular to faith.

The court have answered the question, but the question was about whether the pupils had a right to practice their own religion, nothing to do with the school's faith status.

The rule was brought in after some students, including the girl in question, thought it would be a good idea to pray in the playground and try to coerce other students to also pray.

This is not the UK position. That is the French position.

That is not the question that went to court and was not the question that was answered in court.

The question was must they be allowed to pray.

No one thinks anyone should be allowed to bully.

The court has to decide on what the law says, not on whether or not we or anyone else thinks is fair. It seems from what I read of the judgment that they had done so.

Religion historically has worked by coercion so I am not surprised at this.

Sorry what? This is an appalling post.

I think an employer could object to prayer breaks if they interfered with the employee's work and if they were proved to be excessive

@Gonnagetgoingreturnsagain

Well, that's why I mentioned timing & location.

And the rest of your post supports that point - an accommodation should be made, and this wasn't done in the school, and it could have. However the ethos of the school is to operate in black & white, no room for nuance.

Bullying and intimidation is a separate matter - pupils play football and bully, other pupils play football and don't bully.

The legal question is whether praying should be allowed. The court has answered. There may be an appeal, and the question will be re-answered.

These questions matter and in a country like the UK it is normal to ask them in court. We are not a dictatorship, we are a democracy with access to the courts.

No, they were bulling other students.

All religions should be a private matter. No religion should be anywhere near a school.

Seems like it is an attempt to start a slippery slope of making a secular school into a faith school and it is good to make this very clear this was not going to happen.

I think if there are calls for more Islamic schools because of this again we have to be cautious as there is a lot of entrenched misogyny in more extreme versions of this religion and I don't think we should have schools that use religion to impose values against what we would perceive as our norms.

I think you should be free to practise any religion but not in state institutions necessarily unless there are valid reasons e.g. church schools which have existed for very long periods of time and even then there absolutely should be options to opt out

I have no time for that "strictest headteacher" woman but in this instance I think she is correct. Apparently the praying was causing disruption and was leading to bullying and harrassement. I think schools should be secular, I went to a C of E primary school and we had bible class every day, plus regular attendance at church and in my opinion this is not a necessary part of education. The school day ends before 4pm, this leaves time for prayers, I live in an area with a lot of Muslims and see the children going off to mosque in the early evening, seems a good compromise to me.

I agree.

They weren't asking for special arrangements, they were asking for it to be permitted.

Except that bullying and intimidation of other students was involved.

All schools should be secular. There is no room for ANY worship or religious observance in schools, religion should be studied in an academic sense only.

You want to go to church/mosque/temple/synagogue, you do that on your own time.

I support freedom of religious expression, but the claimants here don't sound like that. They sound like they were just being controversial. The girl can catch up with prayers at the end of the school day. I've never heard of duhr impacting on a whole work or school community before.

Actually they were going against everything the school stood for by way of inclusion. The students organising the playground prayer meetings were also threatening and intimidating other students, which is why the ban was imposed.

I can silently pray anywhere - I don’t need to make a song and dance about it.

It's all completely disingenuous, they just want to be victims of some imagined persecution. I'm sure they'll find something if they look hard enough, like all such grifters do.

https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/r-v-michaela-community-schools-trust/

The school also found it disruptive because this pupil and her mother were bullying other pupils, members of staff and inciting racial hatred. That's not the only reason the headteacher chose to ban them praying.

Ha! I work in the judiciary and I can assure I support cases that are in the public interest, but this is not!

Muslims have the opportunity to ‘catch up’ with their daily prayers - so the need for special arrangements is null and void. If a child wants to take itself quietly off for mid day prayer then there is literally nothing to stop them.