Michaela Community School

• A Muslim student at Michaela School in London has lost her High Court challenge against the school’s ban on prayer rituals.
• The school argued that the ban was put in place to avoid prayers “undermining inclusion”.
• But permitting religious diversity is a tradition in education in England.

Understanding secularism

• Michaela School has two-week holidays over the Christmas and Easter periods, and names them for these Christian festivals.
• The school week is Monday to Friday, which does not impinge upon the Christian day of rest.
• This is a version of secularism that benefits the members of one religion but not another.
• The state’s burgeoning financial involvement in education was accompanied by a pluralist approach to minority religions and denominations.

Matters of conscience

• It contained a conscience clause, allowing non-Anglican parents to withdraw their children from religious instruction.
• The end of Empire and the 1948 Nationality Act brought migrants to Britain from the Indian subcontinent.
• By the mid-1960s, Muslim children began to appear in schools in sufficient numbers that they were able to campaign collectively for the accommodation of their needs.
• And since the 1960s local education authorities and schools have accommodated Muslim needs within the same framework as those of Jews and Catholics.

Helen Carr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.