Faith school where women are banned from wearing trousers becomes state funded

[ArabellaSaurus]

https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2025/09/faith-school-which-bans-women-wearing-trousers-becomes-state-funded

'The National Secular Society has expressed alarm that a London faith school which bans women from wearing trousers and penalises families who attend non-kosher restaurants will now be funded by the state.
Nancy Reuben Primary School re-opened as a voluntary aided (VA) state school this month, after operating as an independent school for 26 years. Its decision to join the state sector follows the Government's move to charge VAT on independent school fees.'

'Women may not wear trousers, mini skirts, shorts, low necklines or sleeveless tops
The school's dress code for parents and visitors says men "must have their head covered at all times" and women "must wear skirts of knee length (a maximum of 2" above is acceptable)". It says trousers "may not be worn" by women.
Additionally, women must cover their underarms and may not wear cap sleeves. Women may not wear clothes with necklines lower than "4 fingers from the collar bone" either "in front or back of the garment".
Trousers are permitted for aupairs and nannies but they may not wear mini skirts, shorts, plunging necklines or sleeveless tops.'

Look back to the original Forstater case - WORIADS. Religions such as Christianity and Judaism are both WORIADS. In a democratic society, they are worthy of respect.

Privacy, safety and vulnerability of women are beliefs. That the statistics show women need safety is a fact, but that women deserve safety is a belief.

And I repeat my question. If we can’t expect our belief based requests to be accommodated, how are we going to protect our privacy, our safety, if you’ve already given away the principle that we can’t even expect belief based requests to be taken into consideration?

How do you argue that GCs have the right to not be harassed in hospital and get same sexed care - when you’ve already argued that a Haredi woman should effectively be told her beliefs are far less important than the consultant’s right to not fill the forms in by 1 pm? Or the ward sister’s right to be annoyed at you for not wanting to be discharged at a time when your relatives can’t drive, your husband can’t prepare any extra food and you’ll have to ask the taxi driver to carry the baby into the house?

Do we have a right to say our radiographer should be female when the one on duty is a TIM? We have a clinical need to be scanned…

If we don’t expect a hospital to show respect for a long established religion, how do we expect them to show respect for GC? The entire Fife case - total lack of respect for the beliefs of a working class nurse that she should have a single sex space to change in.

Clinical needs are more important? OK, Dr Upton’s clinical need, to protect his mental health, was to change in the nurse’s changing room.

Case closed. Nothing to see here, clinical needs are more important and we shouldn’t expect our beliefs to be accommodated.

Look back to the original Forstater case - WORIADS. Religions such as Christianity and Judaism are both WORIADS. In a democratic society, they are worthy of respect.

Yes. But to respect a religion, I don't need to follow its tenets. I can obviously choose to do so if I wish e.g. I sing along to hymns in church at a funeral or wedding but I don't join in with prayers. Instead I sit quietly, generally with my eyes open. However, I can accommodate others' need to do so in accordance with their beliefs where viable e.g. in my previous (UK-based global) company, I avoided booking lunchtime meetings on Fridays as far as possible because the project team was in Egypt and every team member was a practising Muslim.

Do we have a right to say our radiographer should be female when the one on duty is a TIM? We have a clinical need to be scanned…

AFAIK, no, we don't have that right. Instead we have a right to refuse care for any reason e.g. if the only option at that time is to accept a male radiographer. I'm not aware of a law that compels hospitals to provide single-sex care, but instead hospitals are guided to accommodate requests for it if viable because it is a human right for someone to request it, just as it is to request a hospital discharge to meet religious need. Where it would (presumably) become unlawful is a situation where a woman refused care from a male and the hospital then refused to provide the next available female radiographer.

By the same token, a Haredi woman could self-discharge if she didn't want to "wait for the consultant to fill in the forms by 1pm". We don't know the consultant's other priorities and she could weigh up the risk that the consultant hasn't yet had chance to validate that all care has been successfully delivered versus her personal need to arrive home before sunset.

The entire Fife case - total lack of respect for the beliefs of a working class nurse that she should have a single sex space to change in.

The Fife case is an employment tribunal about unfair treatment due to a) Peggie's protected belief that sex is immutable and b) the hospital's and Upton's conduct after she asked the hospital to follow the law on single sex spaces in work.

Clinical needs are more important? OK, Dr Upton’s clinical need, to protect his mental health, was to change in the nurse’s changing room.

The law on single-sex spaces in work is more important than enforced accommodation of Upton's belief or of any potentially declared mental health needs.

Case closed. Nothing to see here, clinical needs are more important and we shouldn’t expect our beliefs to be accommodated.

There is nothing to stop anyone campaigning to change the law e.g. for:

• trans-identifying males to use women's changing rooms to protect their mental health
• Haredi women to have all discharge forms complete by 1pm (and to be entitled to a Sunday discharge if this can't be met)
• schools and workplaces to accommodate Muslim prayer times
• enforcement of religious dress codes when visiting a specific location
• single-sex care to be provided whenever requested

Politicians can then propose Bills for discussion and parliament can weigh up the balance of belief and rights when making and updating laws, including the impact on others who do not share the relevant protected characteristic.

Reflecting more on this, I think this all highlights some of the positives that can come from well thought out EDI initiatives.

A PP mentioned above that it would ideally be possible to discharge all patients who were ready for home by 3pm on Fridays as it would reduce the number of people in on a weekend and save money. Reduced clinical care happens over weekends, so this makes sense. A working group that was motivated by a particular need (e.g. to support Haredi women) could see if this could be achieved for all patients through process changes.

Equally a religious school which is now state funded could examine how it can accommodate the secular needs of children and their parents who are allocated a place when it wasn't their first choice, similar to how they have accommodated au pairs wearing trousers.

Privacy, safety and vulnerability of women are beliefs

Whether or not a woman is attacked is not a belief!

Clinical needs are more important? OK, Dr Upton’s clinical need, to protect his mental health, was to change in the nurse’s changing room.

Dr Upton was not a patient. But ‘transitioning’ increases suicide risk eighteen-fold, and the use of cross sex hormones of associated with a large range of adverse outcomes including significant increased risk of stroke, cancer and heart disease. There is no clinical need to transition. However, if Dr Upton’s requires women to be forced to undress in front of him then he must not be allowed to practise doctor as women are not tools to make men feel better.

trans-identifying males to use women's changing rooms to protect their mental health

It is impossible for men to use women’s spaces - they stop being women’s spaces as soon as they use them,

Yes. But there's nothing to stop anyone campaigning for this to be allowed in law on an "exceptional" basis. Similar to how, as I learned on a different thread about schools this week, there is already a carve-out in the Equality Act which allows schools to remain single-sex but admit a small number of children of the opposite sex. I would hope that any such hypothetical campaign to leverage this existing carve-out as a precedent that could be used beyond school admissions would fail... and that during the course of it doing so that public awareness of autogynophilia would increase.

Everything that I listed above would have a knock-on effect of some kind on those without the protected characteristic if it were to become law.

To use the one from this thread, imagine a school was legally allowed to tell mums that they can't wear trousers when visiting. This would open the doors to all sorts of issues, including potentially majority Muslim/Jewish councils passing a by-law that mandated head coverings for women when out in public within parts of or all of the local area.

Thankfully, we mostly have enough sane politicians that would not support laws that mandate adherence to others' beliefs.

Though an atheist, in a pluralist society our National Health Service should make an effort to accommodate different religions or strongly held values.

Remembering that all religions are funding it and it's supposed to be patient-centred care. I also don't like the state deciding what is and isn't worthy of consideration (with a few exceptions like racism.)

So yes I do think hospitals should try to discharge these mums before sunset on friday, as part of patient centred care. Especially if there's a large community that is important for in that area.

Like someone else pointed out there are also indirect impacts of i.e. more mums choose home births even if more dangerous.

It's a digression but a really interesting discussion.

It is extremely unlikely that a nurse will be sitting around mid afternoon in winter on a Friday doing nothing rather than discharging a patient who is ready to be discharged. So the question is what should they prioritise that over?

They've got to discharge them at some point right though so it's not necessarily taking more time?

Like I said earlier it seems to be a systems, process and management problem. And a resentment/culture issue.

There might even be advantages to discharging some patients earlier - freeing up beds etc.

I suspect the process relates to an outdated assumption to get patients ready for "Dad" to pick up after work.

But that's not right for all patients...

Or it could be that during the day various treatments are taking place so patients need to be prepared/checked/monitored as they leave and return, results checked, staff notified, professional caring services contacted for onward referral, therapists spoken to. All the stuff that just takes place during the normal ‘working hours’. So it may not be until when those tasks tail off in late afternoon that discharge paperwork can be looked at.

So now explain why - if discharge is going to be so very late - the patient can’t be discharged the following day when Shabbat is over.

You mean keep them in hospital another 24 hours with no clinical need when another patient could have the bed?

Yes. Given that apparently, discharging them is so completely unimportant that you can’t possibly look at the discharge forms until late afternoon.

You think other patients should be denied treatment instead?

I think you’re making excuses, tbh. Oh, we can’t possibly do the paperwork in the morning. Oh, we can’t possibly keep them in overnight. Oh, if we give a patient any input on discharge we’ll be denying someone else treatment.

As an earlier poster said - this is a system/procedure problem. Which you have no interest whatsoever in solving.

If they can be discharged in the morning they should be. I firmly object to someone blocking a bed for 24 hours because the nurses were too busy dealing with a patient emergency to do paperwork for another patient who was only declared fit at 3pm after a doctor finished surgery, to be discharged by 3:30pm but got it done by 4pm instead.

Sounds like more excuses, to basically explain that any particular patient will be discharged when you get round to it and should be jolly grateful that you took the time.

Well that escalated quickly.

Each time I've stayed in hospital, I've found the discharge process incredibly frustrating. It involves a lot of waiting around to a) find out if you're actually going to be discharged on that day (even after hints the day before that it was possible) and b) getting the confirmation that it is happening (and paperwork is now being done for meds etc).

However, I've never once assumed that the nurses and doctors were doing it when they could "get round to it" or that I should be grateful that they took the time. Every nurse and doctor will be acutely aware of the pressure to free up the beds. They will also undoubtedly be doing their best to accommodate patients' wishes. The reality is that they will need to prioritise clinical care and patient safety over everything else.

That’s probably because you’ve never seen a really bad experience where you’re left wondering whether the nurse’s inability to process the paperwork or weigh the baby (for eight solid hours) is due to clinical necessity, can’t be arsed or flat out racism. Or the case I mentioned up above where the late discharge meant the care package had fallen through. I wonder if that nurse told herself that half an hour didn’t matter?

Most nurses are very good. Some are not. Some procedures work well. Others need improvement.

But the point of this thread is that Judaism is a very diverse community that includes some very marginalised groups. Per capita, it experiences a very high level of racism, especially when people are ‘visibly Jewish’.

Which is why, in those ‘visibly Jewish’ situations , I get worried when people object to a primary school dress code because it’s offensive to them, or give every possible reason why they shouldn’t have to consider a patient’s deeply held religious beliefs.

We’ve got an entire school where the kids are in danger of racial abuse if they go out on a school trip - where the school quite likely got state status because Barnet was worried what would happen to those kids in a non-religious school - and people are angsty about the possibility of a non-Jewish parent being asked to wear a skirt.

I class people as white when they identify that way. I don't tell them that my interpretation of their identities trumps theirs.

What about when you start your shift and there are 10 people who were fit for discharge from the day before but for several reasons, they didn't get discharged?

They can be discharged today though, a whole day late. Unfortunately it is Friday and so we have to prioritise the people who want to get home early for religious reasons before we start on the backlog from the day before.

This is what I mean about others waiting.

Sometimes, their paediatrician might have said "I'll check back in the afternoon and then maybe baby can go home". Afternoon means anytime from 12pm until what? 6pm? But at 1pm, mum wants to rush doctor back to assess and discharge baby if it all seems to be going well. That doctor has babies on labour ward, a+e and NICU to attend to. There are babies that are due for assessment and possible discharge before that other baby, but often, that baby will be assessed by 2pm because the right things are asid by the right people to the right staff members.

We dont equally consider the "deeply held religious beliefs" of all regions sects though, and nor should we. People have banned Muslims from wearing one of their versions of modest clothing in some countries and it is regularly debated here.

I'd 100% ban 3 year olds in tights for modesty before I'd ban an adult wearing a burkha.

Its not about being discharged at all. It is about there being a queue of people needing discharge and one set of people jumping to the top of it for religious reasons when the people higher on the list could have been fit for discharge for a much longer period.

And if there’s no space on the form for ‘Jewish’, so that they have to pick between ‘white’ and ‘other’?

That kind of does make your interpretation (their identity doesn’t exist as a separate category) trump theirs.