From the beginning of the 2026/27 school year, Austria has introduced by law a ban on the hijab for girls under 14 in the country’s schools. The legislation has even been given the title “Federal Act to Strengthen the Self-Determination of Underage Girls in Schools by Introducing a Headscarf Ban”, and its legislative materials cite, among other things, the aim of protecting underage Muslim girls from segregation and oppression.
Leaving aside the logical collapse involved in setting a cut-off point — a girl’s 14th birthday — at which covering her hair somehow ceases to constitute segregation and oppression, Austria must at least be credited with having confronted the fundamental question: whether a secular state has the right — and perhaps even the duty — to set limits on religious norms within its schools.
In England, where the pressure from Islam is greater still than in Austria, the same question has also been answered — but in precisely the opposite direction.
Hijab from the age of seven
On 1 September, Barnet Hill Academy in West Hendon, north London, changed from a private Islamic school into a so-called voluntary aided school, thereby becoming part of the publicly funded school sector. Among other things, this means that parents no longer have to pay school fees, while the school’s governing body retains considerable influence over its religious character, recruitment and admissions policy.
Barnet Hill Academy’s uniform list for girls states: “White Hijab (from Year 3).” Year 3 begins when children are around seven years old. The school explains on its website that its school uniform and Islamic dress code are so closely intertwined with its Islamic ethos that it uses the terms “uniform” and “Islamic dress” interchangeably. One reason given is that from Year 3, pupils take part in congregational prayer, Quran recitation and other Islamic religious practices.
Following criticism of the policy, the school clarified that non-Muslim girls are not required to wear the hijab. Astonishingly, Barnet Council has cited precisely this point in defence of the school, stating that the hijab requirement is lawful and does not apply to non-Muslim pupils.
Which leaves the Muslim girls.
For them, the hijab forms part of the school’s Islamic uniform code from the age of seven — something Barnet Council openly acknowledges and accepts as compatible with the school’s transition to public funding. But Barnet Council owes an explanation as to how it expects the school to meet the requirement to prepare its pupils for “life in modern Britain” and promote the “Fundamental British Values” that English schools are required to uphold: democracy, the rule of law, mutual respect and tolerance and, not least, “individual liberty”.
Although Barnet Hill Academy assures visitors to its website of its commitment to British values, every alarm bell should be ringing when it simultaneously declares that British values are “coterminous with Islamic values” and that the strong traditions of Islam “enhance and reinforce the laws of Britain”. And any remaining doubt about the school’s mission should disappear when, further down its website, one reads that its Islamic ethos permeates teaching and school life; that pupils from Year 3 take part in congregational Islamic prayer, Quran recitation and other religious practices; and that “school uniform” and “Islamic dress” are so closely connected that the school uses the terms interchangeably.
The question, then, is how the council, knowing both the thoroughly Islamic character of the school and its hijab requirement for seven-year-old girls, could nevertheless conclude that the school fulfilled the requirement to promote “individual liberty” and prepare its pupils for “life in modern Britain”.
On 4 August, the school was approved.
When principles give way
Values and principles mean something only if they are also capable of setting a boundary. If principles exist only on paper but in practice must give way whenever they collide with religious and cultural sensitivities, then tolerance has not defended those principles. It has hollowed them out.
And that is perhaps the most serious aspect of the story of Barnet Hill Academy. This is not merely a story about seven-year-old girls in hijabs, but about a British state that demands adherence to “British values” while apparently no longer being willing to let those values have consequences when they collide with the sensitivities that continually challenge them.
Sooner or later, this erosion of fundamental principles becomes a question of the legitimacy of the state itself. If citizens repeatedly see the principles on which the state claims to rest give way whenever they are put to the test, their confidence that the state will stand firm when it truly matters will inevitably be weakened.
Austria has drawn a line. One may argue about whether it has drawn that line in the right place, but not about the fact that it has drawn one. In England, they have chosen accommodation — and called it “British values”.
A state that does not itself know which values and boundaries it is prepared to defend cannot, in the long run, expect its citizens to trust that it will defend them.
