A primary school teacher was allegedly banned from working with children after telling a Muslim student that ‘Britain is still a Christian state’.
The incident, which took place at a London school, led to the teacher being referred to the local child protection board and even caught the attention of a senior detective from the Met Police’s child abuse investigation team, reports The Telegraph.
The teacher, who chose to remain anonymous, was suspended and sacked after he reprimanded students for washing their feet in the sinks in the boys’ toilets.
Afterwards, he reminded the Year 6 class that Islam was a minority religion in the UK.
And according to the child who made the complaint, he said there was an Islamic school a mile away if they wished to attend it instead.
The educator was subsequently suspended and then sacked in March last year.
A month later, he was referred to a local safeguarding board and the Metropolitan Police.
The safeguarding officer concluded that he had made hurtful comments about Islam and that the child had been subject to emotional harm.
The police inquiry has since been dropped, but the teacher is apparently suing the local authority with backing from the Free Speech Union.
It is understood that the teacher has appealed the ban and is working part-time at another school outside of London.
Lord Young, the director of the Free Speech Union, said on Monday: ‘This teacher lost his job and almost ended up being barred from the profession for life just because he pointed out to a class of Muslim schoolchildren that the national religion of England is Anglicanism.
‘Things have reached a pretty pass in this country if a teacher can be branded a safeguarding risk because he says something that’s incontestably true.
‘If he’d claimed that Islam is the official religion of England, even though that’s not true, I doubt he would have got into any trouble.’
