Religious Tolerance In Schools
During the season of goodwill and tolerance to all men it is worth reflecting how far this should extend to our everyday lives. So how far does goodwill to all religions go in schools?
Recently the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a student should not wear an Islamic headscarf during physical education and sports classes.
This followed her claim that the school had interfered with her religious freedom, prescribed under Article 9 of The European Convention of Human Rights, because it expelled her for refusing to remove her headscarf.
The facts of the case were that an 11 year old Muslim student at a school in France refused to remove her headscarf for PE and sports lessons. The school explained that the headscarf was incompatible with physical education classes and after a period of time it expelled the student for a failure to participate and breach of the ‘duty of assiduity’. The duty of assiduity requires pupils to participate in the teaching periods in the school’s time table.
The student’s parents made three appeals to the domestic courts and in 2006 they took the case to The European Court of Human Rights.
The court decided that whilst the student’s right to her freedom of religion was restricted, the restriction was necessary. The reason it was felt to be necessary was that the ban protected the rights and freedoms of others and public order. In a democratic society it might be necessary to place restrictions on the freedom to show one’s religion so as to reconcile the interests of other groups within society and ensure the respect of everyone’s beliefs. Regulations regarding the wearing of religious symbols might vary from country to country according to national traditions.
Earlier decisions of the English courts regarding the wearing of religious symbols have varied.
In July 2008 the courts upheld a Sikh students right to wear the Kara, a 50mm wide bangle, in school. The student had claimed discrimination on grounds of religion and race. A claim made under article 8 of the Convention – ‘a right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence’ failed. Upholding the student’s claim that she should be granted exemption from the school’s uniform policy the court found that none of the arguments put forward by the school in support of the uniform policy justified the refusal to let her wear the Kara.
This case was distinguished from two earlier cases of 2007 and 2006 where the justification of the school’s banning of the wearing of religious clothing was that the articles were deemed to be extremely visible and very ostentatious. Consequently the courts upheld that the schools were justified in prohibiting the wearing at school of the niqab and the jibab.
In all these cases the form and content of the schools policy on uniform has come under close consideration here and abroad. It is not enough to simply prescribe a uniform without giving careful consideration to the reasoning behind it.
Contact Julia Green on 01752 675504 for further information or advice.
Published 22/12/2008. The author of this article is Julia Green
