British Multiculturalism Policies and Muslim Parents’ School Choices in Northern England: Culturally Sensitive Schooling and Moments of Choice

Naeem, Muhammad (2023) British Multiculturalism Policies and Muslim Parents’ School Choices in Northern England: Culturally Sensitive Schooling and Moments of Choice. Doctoral thesis, Plymouth Marjon University.

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Abstract

This study explores British Pakistani Muslim parents’ school choices in Northern England by establishing an understanding of their perceptions of multicultural mixing, culturally sensitive schooling and ‘moments’ of choice. Multiculturalism policy development is examined to provide the context for parents’ perceptions and choices. It investigated how parents’ concerns towards aspects of culturally sensitive schooling such as the teaching of religious education, relationships and sex education, language education and single-sex education determine their ‘moments’ of choice. The study also highlights the implications of school choice in accommodating the cultural and religious needs of Muslim pupils in no-religion state schools. Parental choice has been one of the keystones of education reform policy in the UK since the 1980s. The policy envisaged to bring choice and competition among schools to raise the educational attainments of pupils. However, it remains debatable and does not seem to favour parents from low socio-economic backgrounds. It has resulted in segregation among schools alongside segregation in residential neighbourhoods, especially in Blackburn, which is a town in North of England with ethnic Muslim residential concentration. Blackburn is one of the most segregated towns in the UK (Cantle, 2001), presenting an interesting canvas for Muslim parental school choice in a segregated setting. It is a segregated town where White British and Asian Muslims live ‘parallel lives’. This study claims its originality by filling the gap of lack of research in Blackburn in the context of the ongoing discussion around the official ‘death’ of multiculturalism and the corresponding ‘community cohesion’ debates in the UK. Therefore, the research was conducted in the North of England in a post-industrial area, Blackburn, where there is a high presence of Muslims who came to the country during the middle of the twentieth century. This study employed a case study approach, drawing data from documentary materials and in-depth semi-structured interviews of 33 British Pakistani Muslim parents in Blackburn. The participants were recruited through the Blackburn business community, a religious organisation, and the local council. A qualitative methodology was employed through social constructionism, which provided the epistemological basis for the study. The researcher used both insider-outsider positions simultaneously during interviews, which helped to get maximum variations in the data. A thematic analysis supported the researcher’s interpretivist approach to understanding participants’ experiences, behaviour, and opinions. The in-depth semi�structured interviews helped generate ‘thick descriptions’ of participants' viewpoints on educational challenges Muslims face in a segregated northern town such as Blackburn. The ‘quantitizing’ of qualitative data: the counting of participant statements gave precision to data analysis and improved the transparency of key findings of the study. The participants utilised their social, religious, ethnic, cultural and economic resources to navigate England’s education system. It has resulted in the typology of ii choosers such as informed, constrained, and semi-skilled choosers in Blackburn (Gewirtz et al., 995). Informed choosers had resources and were more confident about their choices; constrained choosers lacked resources and chose the closest schools, while semi-skilled choosers had a strong inclination but limited capacity to engage with England’s education system. This typology of choosers preferred four types of schools, such as community/Church schools, Muslim schools, ‘mixed’ schools, and Asian-majority schools, for multiple reasons. The choice of a particular school, Muslim, or no-religion state may be due to both reasons for making the child a faithful Muslim and for ‘good results’. Gujarati Muslim schools exercise a ‘strict’ faith-based admission policy. A minority of parents secured admissions into Gujarati Muslim schools which exhibited Wahabi ethos. However, the parents did not convert to Wahabism but accepted the philosophy of a different sect temporarily for better educational attainments for their children. Similarly, there were reasons for choosing a ‘mixed’ school if a parent thought Islamic religious education was better reserved for a supplementary school or home. Participants ascribed different meanings to the notions of ‘mixing’ such as mixing with different ethnicities, White British, Gujarati Indians or mixing of genders or religions. It showed a lack of clear official language when talking about multiculturalism and diversity in the UK. Despite parents’ desire to ‘mix’, most of the children’s ‘mixing’ takes place within the school premises. Some parents educate their children at schools with an Asian Muslim majority, as they feel safe in the numbers. This has resulted in the ‘Asia-isation’ of state schools in Blackburn. The findings indicated that parental opinions on issues such as ‘mixing’, ‘criteria for a good school’, ‘single-sex schooling’ and ‘good education’, showed variations depending on their preference for choices. In this way, the study illustrated the ideological power of faith and described that ‘good education’ is the ultimate goal of parents. It would give children the knowledge of deen-o-dunya (meaning religion and the world): a combination of secular and religious education, which would help them succeed in the world and the hereafter. The findings also suggest that Muslim parents are not a homogeneous group, and there is significant diversity in what Muslim parents want. However, sending the children to the state school (community/church) during the day and supplementary school in the evening has developed as a dominant pattern for the education of Muslim children in England. The study is both significant and timely, given recent debates revealing the tensions surrounding Muslim parents’ school choices within segregated settings in a post�multicultural context. This is the first study exploring the school choice of Pakistani Muslim parents through multiculturalism policies and culturally sensitive schooling in Blackburn, Northern England.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Depositing User:	Ms Raisa Burton
Date Deposited:	20 Feb 2025 12:30
Last Modified:	20 Feb 2025 12:30
URI:	https://marjon.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/17942

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