Muslim school will not allow girls to eat lunch until after boys have finished, Ofsted chief says

From the Telegraph

A Muslim school will not allow girls to eat lunch until after boys have finished, an Ofsted chief has told MPs.

Al-Hijrah school in Birmingham is still segregating boys and girls despite a Court of Appeal ruling in 2017 that found it was unlawful,

Addressing the women and equalities select committee, he said that Ofsted inspectors are trying to hold schools account for discriminating against girls but feel “isolated” when their stance is not backed up by ministers.

He said that Al-Hijrah school was enforcing a “very strict gender segregation” which included “denying the girls to have their lunch until the boys had had theirs”. “And we had some very discriminatory texts for instance, encouraging violence against women,” he said.

Mr Tryl told MPs: “The Court of Appeal rightly said that schools needed a transition period where they were segregating and yet still we have not just Al-Hijrah but we have countless other schools, mixed schools which are segregating on the basis of sex.

“Similarly other schools who have refused to teach about sexual orientation issues. We have commented on reports but we haven’t seen a change there. This is where I talk about the isolation. We go out there. We make these tough decisions and we often take quite a lot of criticism for the stance we take but we don’t always see the enforcement action we would like to see.”

Birmingham Live reported in November that the school (and twoother Muslim schools in Birmingham The Acecinna Academy and The Wisdom Academy?) was still defiantly practising segregation. The school’s proposed solution is to end segregation by closing its doors to secondary age pupils but remaining open to pupils aged four to 11.