When a teenage girl knelt to pray in a playground at a school in London just over a year ago, few could have predicted the bitter ramifications, the intense row and the soaring costs that would ensue.
Michaela Community School — normally in the headlines because of its outspoken founder and head teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh — became the centre of a new controversy after teachers prevented the girl and fellow pupils from praying with mats at lunchtime.
This swiftly spiralled, leading to a petition, a bomb threat, a brick through the window of one teacher’s home — and ultimately, after the girl and her mother took legal action, a High Court case estimated to have cost the taxpayer more than half a million pounds.
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