An Islamic faith school unlawfully segregated boys and girls while giving male pupils more favourable treatment, inspectors found.
A member of staff at Redstone Academy in Birmingham told pupils that “university is not for females”, according to an Ofsted report.
The fee-charging school, which has been judged as “inadequate”, gives boys first choice of work experience places and a wider range of extracurricular activities – including sport, the report said.
Boys and girls were “unlawfully segregated” for all activities in the secondary school except for assemblies, inspectors found.
The school, which charges up to £2,885 in annual fees, also bars girls from playing ju-jitsu and football, and makes them wear uniforms on school trips while the boys do not have to.
“Boys enjoy school more than girls. This is because they are treated favourably and have more privileges,” the Ofsted report said. “Some of the girls told us that they do not like this. They said that this was not fair and feel disadvantaged.”
Inspectors visited the school in November and concluded its unlawful segregation of pupils by sex is having a “negative impact” on girls’ education and self-confidence.
It comes after the Court of Appeal concluded in 2017 that an Islamic faith school’s policy of segregating boys from girls was unlawful sex discrimination.
Ofsted had placed the mixed-sex Al-Hijrah school in Birmingham into special measures in 2016 after it claimed dividing classes was discriminatory.
Saadat Rasool, headteacher of Redstone Academy, has said it has no intention of defying the law in any way.
He said: “We believe the idea that boys are ‘given favourable treatment and more opportunities than girls’ is just not accurate as all the previous Ofsted reports have noted that provision for boys and girls has been equal and fair.
“We work very diligently to offer the best to both boys and girls at our school – and both are given equal opportunities to be successful in whatever they choose.”
