Britain’s Muslim schools segregate male, female staff

Teachers and other staff at some independent Islamic faith schools in the UK are facing gender-based segregation, prompting the country’s schools watchdog to write to the education ministry.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of Ofsted, said his inspectors found one independent religious school using dividing screens across the room to segregate men and women.

“I am writing again to report that Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) continue to find that staff are being segregated because of their gender in Muslim independent schools,” Sir Wilshaw wrote in his letter sent to UK education secretary Nicky Morgan on Wednesday.

It adds that officials who inspected Rabia Girls’ and Boys’ School in Luton, east England, expressed their concern after the school insisted on “segregating men and women through the use of a dividing screen across the middle of the room” at the initial meeting.

“This meeting was not carried out in a religious setting but in a classroom. HMI also gathered evidence that male and female staff are segregated during whole school staff training sessions. Male staff sit in one room and the session is simultaneously broadcast to female staff in another part of the school,” the letter added.

The inspection was carried out earlier in April following the department for education’s (DfE) request for Ofsted to carry out an emergency follow-up inspection of the school already assessed as “inadequate”.