Lancaster school Jamea Al Kauthar is denying national newspaper claims that it forces pupils to wear the veil.

The £2,500-a-year all-girls Muslim boarding school was one of just three institutions to be named in a Sunday Telegraph report on compulsory veil policies in schools in the UK.

The article claimed Jamea Al Kauthar had introduced rules which forced girls to wear the burka or a full headscarf and veil known as the niqab when they were walking to or from school. It said the school’s uniform policy had been heavily criticised by mainstream Muslims who believed enforcement of the veil was a “dangerous precedent” and that children attending such schools were being “brainwashed”.

Jamea Al Kauthar declined to comment directly to the Lancaster Guardian but posted a statement on its website refuting the claims. The school said: “In response to the articles appearing in several newspapers regarding the enforcement of the veil upon our students, we would like to clarify that Jamea Al-Kauthar does not force any student to wear the veil. However, we do encourage students to dress modestly.”

Lancaster Guardian, 8 October 2010

Clearly we misreported this issue. Rather than identifying a mere three schools in the UK that require pupils to wear the niqab, theSunday Telegraph found at most two.