Girls been forced to sit at the back of the class

[Wannabestepfordwife]

Apologies that I can't link but has anyone else seen recent stories on the Al-Madinah school in derby.

Not only are female staff required to wear a headscarf regardless of religion and having their contracts changed to reflect this.

But female students are being forced to sit at the back of the class and have to give up their place in the dinner queue for male pupils.

Now I'm not what you would call an active feminist but I'm absolutely disgusted by this. A free and equal education for everyone regardless of sex, creed, race is one of the best things about this country IMO.

Does anyone know what powers the government have over free schools or can they basically do what they want?

Can you imagine the uproar if black children had to give up their place in the queue for white children?

Why are we even debating whether girls have equal rights to boys in 21 century Britain? Are we going backwards?

edam - yes, you're right about all that, I stand corrected (my grandmother was one of the first women with the temerity to insist on continuing to be paid as a teacher after she married) ... but I think I was right in saying change didn't come from bans and demonization, but that it came from within, bottom up. Islam (and any other misogynistic culture/religion) has to change itself, as Christianity has started to do.

Our law is that the sexes are equal, and religion does not trump that except in limited areas which pertain only to the religion itself (the state can't enforce women bishops for instance). This is clear and must be upheld. If any religious group wants the privilege of running a school (whether with taxpayers money or not) then they will have to adapt to be lawful.

Why are we even debating whether girls have equal rights to boys in 21 century Britain? Are we going backwards?

I don't think anyone here is debating that - its a given. They have equal rights and violations of those rights should be dealt with. If a school - its governors, heads, teachers - have breached equality laws then they should be removed or disciplined.

MrJudgey - The seeking of knowledge is fard ayn - compulsory upon every Muslim, male and female. The world's oldest university was founded by a Muslim woman: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_al-Karaouine.

The first sentence revealed in the Quran is "Read, in the name of the God that created you", this is addressed to men and women and there are many passages within the Quran praising the seeking of knowledge.

There is nothing within the teachings of Islam discouraging female education.

The owners of this school are behaving in an appalling manner and this is being investigated.

So why the need to make big sweeping statements about Islam? Islam isn't the problem. The school owner's interpretation of it is.

I suppose the Taliban are misintrepetring it too when they stop girls attending school.

The cultural interpretation can be very different though.

I have faced loving fathers saying in bewilderment 'But what for a girl need education? Girl is for babies' when we have been working towards an understanding of why a girl should be educated beyond 10.
Or that education involves more than an ability to read the Qu'ran.
Or the women giggling with mischief and hiding the contraceptive pills in their homes, so that their husbands didn't realise why God no longer blessed them with families of a dozen children and blamed the damp climate for crippling their fertility.
Or the naughty girls sent back home to learn how to be good girls and turning up a few years later with a husband.
Or the women trapped in their own homes unless a male relative over the age of 10 was available to escort them, and the mother who phoned school weeping and begging me to walk her children home because she couldn't come and get them.
As spork said:
'support the women inside of the communities in their struggle to fight for their rights. Listening to them and giving the support requested and pulling up the support their misogynistic elements get from our leaders and communities'

Those children are now women with children of their own, bilingual and aware of what is available as support if they reach out for it.

Wet August - Malala Yousafzai would say that they are: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-full-text-malala-yousafzai-delivers-defiant-riposte-to-taliban-militants-with-speech-to-the-un-general-assembly-8706606.html

But, what does she know? I'm sure you know waaay more about Islam then she does.

Shock, horror..... misogynistic religion considers females inferior!!!!! Stop pandering to religious nuts who will never respect women (or gays, infidels, apostates...), they shouldn't be tolerated.

Like the Bible, the Qu'ran can be misinterpreted, reinterpreted and cherry-picked depending on who is reading it.
Well, like any religious text.
'Yes, I know what it says, and this is what it means'

Entertain me zatya. What form would your not tolerating Muslims take?

AdventureTed; religious prejudice is indulged because to challenge is consistently met with screams of 'racism', 'islamophobia', 'bigot', 'rightwinger'.... and of course nobody wants those allegations against them.

So girls to the back and under a tent....

So what would you actually do? (Don't forget you'd need to deal with large swathes of the Christian church too if you're going to do a proper job.)

Gosh; I said tolerating religious nuts. I don't tolerate misogyny, why the bloody hell should I be treated as inferior because extremist muslims believe I'm one fourth the worth of a man? Religious prejudice should not be tolerated.

The most effective thing that we and the bilingual support staff did was educating the children to realise just how wide their life choices could be, and what their rights were, and how to access them.
The children empowered their own mothers in many cases, the mothers went against the rulings of the fathers and the imans if they saw a benefit or an essential for their children. Despite the abuse and the beatings and the shunning that sometimes were a consequence.

Yes, I'm sure that a similar process would have occurred in a restrictive Christian environment too, and with similar scriptural authority.

Rather than 'they shouldn't be tolerated' might it not be more constructive (as in actually get something to happen) to say 'behaviour which contravenes equality legislation will not be tolerated but be subject to the law' ?

I don't tolerate misogyny, why the bloody hell should I be treated as inferior because extremist muslims believe I'm one fourth the worth of a man? Religious prejudice should not be tolerated.

Now that I can totally agree with.

Oh, Errol that's no fun! Where's the name calling and stuff?

Making the girls sit at the back is nothing to do with Islam. However it shows that the head and board of governors need sacking as soon as possible.

Free schools need to be subject to closer scutiny and prehaps should be monitored by the LEA for quality as well as OFSTED.

Isn't it the case that only about 50% of the children actually come from Muslim families?

What do the other parents in the school think about this?

Not that I am any less concerned about the children from Muslim families, but could it be the case that some families are being simply "allocated" this school and told it's this or nothing? Or can this not happen with free schools?

I'm imagining a situation where people from lower income backgrounds in areas where the other schools are oversubscribed being simply given this school with no alternative, and then finding their daughters sent to the back of the class and the back of the dinner queue... Anyone know if this is fundamentally incorrect? The articles posted seem to suggest it's 50/50.

The head's letter is absolutely bizarre. Seems like confirmation that these allegations are true if anything.

I really struggle with the idea of 'free schools'. From the start I thought that the concept was OK in theory but in practice, most free schools would have strong faith links and these would not be monitored properly. In our local area, the only new 'free schools' are faith based, none are non-faith. Now, I feel very hypocritical as my children go to a CoE school, but I know that they learn about other faiths, and that there are children of other faiths (and agnostic families) who attend the school too. The issue locally is that there is a shortage of places and the only school in the borough that has places is a new sikh 'free school' and parents don't have a choice at all, nil choice, it's either that school or none. Two of our local primary schools have waiting lists of over 120 children....

I think that it is already illegal to force people (women) to adopt a religious symbol (headscarf) as part of a uniform, just as it is illegal to require them to not wear them. Imagine if a CoE school would require all staff (including muslim staff - we have two at our school, a Teacher Assistant and a midday assistant) to take the headscarf off whilst at school. It would be front page news and the school would be taken to court within minutes.

I am genuinely puzzled by the fact that local authorities are not allowed to open new schools at present - any new school opened has to be a free school.

A local authority opening a new school would be doing it purely because there is a need for more school places in an area.

Organisations, however, must surely have varying motivations for getting involved with opening a new school (as this case proves).

It is all very well saying they empower parents and teachers to create and control a school to work in the way they want too, but what if there was a need for a school in an area where parents and even teachers would not have the necessary skills to create and manage a school. It is a huge undertaking.

So if it's not the parents and teachers, who is it? And why?

Yes - its bloody ridiculous. Someone should 'empower' parents and teachers to be able to say, well actually what we really want is a non-dom, national curriculum school run by (not for profit) professionals.

You are assuming that the parents are unhappy with what is happening, is that the case?

You are assuming that the parents are unhappy with what is happening, is that the case?

do you mean with the Al Madinah school in particular or with the related but distinct issue of only free school being created that blueberry raises ... in the latter case its hard to imagine that all the parents are happy. In the former, whether the parents are happy or not is irrelevant if the girls' and women teachers' rights are being violated.

I was meaning with the specific case of the Al-Madinah school.

It is harder to change things if you are arguing on several fronts at once, and it's why using the laws and equality legislation is essential. And why no educational establishment; free, faith, private or state should be exempt.
If the parents want this sort of education and environment for all their children, then the fight to ensure thee rights of the child are foremost needs to be done by others.