From this year, British taxpayers will be funding a school in Barnet where girls as young as seven are required to wear the hijab.
Labour-run Barnet Council has quietly approved voluntary-aided status for Barnet Hill Academy. In this previously independent Islamic faith school, the hijab is compulsory uniform for girls as young as seven.
This is utterly wrong.
Barnet Council says that non-Muslim pupils will not be required to wear the hijab.
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But that is not what the school’s published uniform policy says.
Nowhere does the policy state non-Muslim girls are exempt.
Instead, it simply states the hijab is “compulsory” for girls from Year 3 and lists it alongside the other required items of school uniform.
And in any event, what if a Muslim girl does not want to wear a hijab?
A council spokesman has nevertheless insisted the policy is “legally compliant and non-compulsory for non-Muslim pupils”.
It is not clear what has led them to that conclusion.
It raises serious questions about what scrutiny Labour-run Barnet Council carried out before approving the school’s move into the state-funded sector, what assurances it sought about the uniform policy, and on what basis it can now tell the public that the policy is legally compliant.
The council’s own language makes this decision even harder to understand.
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Its written judgement praised the school’s “inclusive policies” and said they supported the “elimination of discrimination”, as well as the “advancement of equality of opportunity”.
However, the policy it approved appears to impose a religious dress requirement on girls while their male classmates face no equivalent obligation.
How is this equality?
I have written, alongside Joy Morrissey, our shadow equalities minister, to the council to seek answers to all these questions.
Schools should be places where children learn, girls are given the same freedom and opportunity as boys and the values of our country are upheld.
No women or girls should be forced to cover their hair in this country, least of all by a school.
Many GB News readers will rightly be up in arms that this is what their money is now going towards.
It betrays British values.
This should never happen in a British state school.
And under the Conservatives, it would not.
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