Revealed: Muslim schoolgirl who is taking High Court legal action against her teachers after pupils were banned from praying in school playground was suspended last year for threatening to stab girl

A Muslim schoolgirl who is taking High Court legal action against her teachers after pupils were banned from praying in the playground was suspended last year for threatening to stab a girl.

Court papers reveal the teenager made the threat soon after confiding in the fellow pupil that she was bringing the court case to ‘harm the school’. She was excluded for five days last April after her ‘scared’ confidante told teachers what the girl had said to her.

The news comes as her headteacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, told The Mail on Sunday last night that she feared for her own safety due to the backlash over the legal case, which the pupil and her mother are funding with legal aid.

The school – half of whose 700 pupils are Muslim – has never provided a prayer room, and pupils did not pray in the past, including the pupil suing the school, who can only be known as TTT.

The head said the school stopped the praying when TTT and others began to intimidate other Muslim pupils, telling them to fast during Ramadan.

She added: ‘We believe in promoting cohesion. Too often the Left denies brown and black children the right to be British – they say we are from somewhere else. But we are not. For multi-culturalism to work, everyone needs to feel as though they are British.’

Ms Birbalsingh said the ban was necessary to fulfil her school’s mission to promote integration between pupils of different ethnic backgrounds and religions.

“If a school is secular, it ought to be allowed to be secular,” she said.

Ms Birbalsingh told the paper the school will “definitely appeal if we lose”, adding: “I will not divide children according to race and religion; it will not happen under my watch.”