The real Singapore-on-Thames

Is Michaela Multiculturalism our only hope?

In 1965, on the day Singapore won its independence, its great founder Lee Kuan Yew declared that the new state would be ‘not a Malay nation, not a Chinese nation, not an Indian nation. Everybody will have a place in Singapore; equal; language, culture, religion’.

The new country, poor and vulnerable to more powerful neighbours, was also hugely weakened by its delicate ethnic balance, which could at any moment explode.

The previous year the city had suffered one of its worst communal riots, with 23 killed over the summer in fights between Chinese and Malays, which began during a procession to celebrate the birth of Mohammed. Violence broke out again in September, leaving another 13 dead.

So the Singaporean model was established, a system of multiculturalism in which certain freedoms were sacrificed, including the freedom to criticise religion and to an extent choose where one lives, in return for peace and prosperity.

The model has undoubtedly been a success; community tensions have been eased and the country has grown absurdly rich, which always helps. 

When people talk about Singapore-on-Thames, however, it is this aspect of the city-state, rather than its economic dynamism or no-nonsense approach to crime, which Britain is most imitating. Or at least, one might call it Singapore-on-Brent, to give it the name of the tributary that runs through west London.

The Michaela Community School in the London borough of that name is perhaps the most successful in Britain. Rated outstanding by Ofsted, it sends 82% of pupils to Russell Group universities despite one in four qualifying for free meals. Out of 7,000 secondaries rated for improvement from primary level, it is first.

Much of this success is down to Katharine Birbalsingh, often labelled ‘Britain’s strictest headteacher’, who has become a public figure much loved by conservatives, although less so on the Left. (Last year The New European placed Birbalsingh on their ‘shit list’.)

As William Atkinson described her in ConHome, Birbalsingh is ‘A self-proclaimed traditionalist; discipline is her watchword. Students walk silently between classes. Minor infractions are punished strongly (she calls detentions “an act of love”). Mobile phones are banned.’ At lunch children sing ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’.

And it works, for as Lee Kuan Yew once wrote: ‘A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honourable place in history.’

Yet just as tiny Singapore had its enemies, so has Singapore-on-Brent, and since January the school has been fighting a court case over its prayer rules. The issue came down to whether members of a religious minority were able to overrule the strict model instigated by the authorities. This week the school won its case. 

The school is located in a very multicultural part of north-west London, and like Singapore has a diverse population - about half its 700 pupils are Muslim. In March 2023 it introduced a policy stopping ‘prayer rituals’, which began when three pupils started praying in the school’s yard, using blazers to kneel on as they were not allowed prayer mats - a number which soon grew to 30. The governing body stopped it, and Birbalsingh said the decision was taken ‘against a backdrop of events including violence, intimidation and appalling racial harassment of our teachers’. Staff even received death threats and were told the school would be bombed.

The case began at the High Court in London in January, with the pupil’s lawyer saying the ‘prayer ban’ had unlawfully breached her right to religious freedom, and that it made her feel ‘like somebody saying they don’t feel like I properly belong here.’ Some £300,000 on legal aid was spent on the case, with the girl ‘claiming the policy was discriminatory and “uniquely” affects her faith due to its ritualised nature’. She said the prayer ban was ‘the kind of discrimination which makes religious minorities feel alienated from society’.

Michaela told the High Court that allowing prayer rituals risked ‘undermining inclusion’ between pupils, the school being a ‘happy and respectful’ place in the headteacher’s words. It also claimed that the prayers led to other pupils being pressured, told they were ‘bad Muslims’ for not joining in. After it began, one child began wearing a headscarf, having never done so, while another left the school choir  after being told it was ‘haram’.

Although the school policy applies to all religions, the argument made was that it was in effect discrimination against Muslims, ‘because Islamic prayer is ritualised and not internal. Christian children, they say, are still allowed to pray personally and quietly.’

Birbalsingh explained in her statement to the High Court that Michaela is ‘a place where children of all races and religions buy into something they all share and that is bigger than themselves: our country’. Birbalsingh had warned that ‘multiculturalism can only succeed’ when every group makes sacrifices ‘for the sake of the whole.’

Indeed, the school teaches a patriotic vision that many see as a template for successful multiculturalism. This involves compromise, as it does is in Singapore, and Birbalsingh says that ‘all regions make sacrifices so that we can maintain a safe secular community’. 

As Janice Turner wrote when the case started, the school’s philosophy is:

Find a compromise that may not be everyone’s first choice but eliminates religious division and puts the community above the individual. If children want lamb biryani, spicy ribs or burgers they can enjoy them at home. But at school they will break bread as one.

Leaving religion at the school gates has contributed to Michaela’s phenomenal results, since it enshrines the absolute sovereignty of school rules. This in turn has kept at bay the gangs, violence and racial divisions that blight many poorer communities.

When it was clear this was sowing division, Michaela’s governors voted 11-1 to ban prayer rituals. And although this applied to every faith, an aggressive social media campaign spilled into the real world: glass bottles were thrown over the fence, teachers threatened, police called to a bomb hoax. An online petition reached 16,000 signatures.

England does not have a French-style system of secularism, and official rules about religion are ambiguous, a typically British fudge. Minorities have historically had exemptions to religious assembly in Church of England schools, whether Catholics, Jews or Quakers, while also having the option of their own schools in bigger towns. Certain people may not like religious schools getting funding, but they always had the option of a secular school, especially since increasing numbers ignored official rules about daily worship.

As Atkinson pointed out: ‘The 1944 Education Act mandates a daily act of Christian worship for maintained schools – now including academies – in a bung to the bishops by Rab Butler’, but ‘Ofsted gave up inspecting it 20 years ago, since 76 per cent of schools were not complying.’

This created a system where parents could choose how much religion they were prepared to inflict on their children, and it worked well; in fact so well that we have been able to muddle through without clarity. The Government’s official position is that there is no requirement for schools to allow pupils prayer time, nor are schools ‘required to provide any pupil with a physical space… to conduct their prayers’, but the 2010 Equality Act does suggest a school should consider whether preventing prayer ‘would constitute indirect discrimination against those who share protected characteristics’.

As Atkinson put it: ‘Most Muslim parents will be the same as those of the vast majority of other faiths and none, interested in nothing more than their children receiving as good an education as possible. Many schools will come to a happy fudge – as mine did – where those wishing to pray can do so. Pupils can opt out of both collective religious services and RE lessons.’