Sir, – I was somewhat surprised to see the headline "Headscarf bans: Coming to a Catholic school near you?" tweeted by The Irish Times early on Thursday, as I could not understand for the life of me why a Catholic primary school would have any problem with a pupil wearing a hijab (Muslim headscarf). CPSMA's standard and consistent advice to Catholic primary schools is that they should, of course, allow the wearing of the hijab or any other clothing or symbol required by a pupil's faith.
It is well known that Muslim parents prefer to send their children to faith schools and I would be concerned that your headline might lead to the misapprehension that Catholic primary schools do not respect the faith of Muslim pupils. While I do not think there are Muslim teachers in our schools yet, I did check with my opposite number in Scotland and yes they do have Muslim teachers in Catholic primary schools and yes they do wear the hijab, and no it is not a problem.
Anyone who attended our recent agm would have seen pupils and guests wearing hijabs and as far as I could see no one had any problem with that either. – Yours, etc,
SEAMUS MULCONRY,
General Secretary,
CPSMA,
St Patrick’s College,
Maynooth, Co Kildare.