Mike Shallcross

There was a situation at my daughter’s school last week which left her in tears. I went in to the school the day after to let them know we were removing her with immediate effect. The head teacher tried to explain but I had no interest in her excuses or reasons. The school had a play and an open evening for next year’s new pupils, and my daughter’s class were asked to take the potential new pupils and their parents for a tour of the school and classes. My daughter is the most softly spoken, polite and friendly child you’d probably ever meet. She’s one of just 40 Jewish pupils at the school out of over a thousand children. My wife wanted her to go to a non Jewish school because she felt concerned about the security threats at Jewish schools, and I don’t have much say in the matter as I’m just the dad. Our youngest goes to a Jewish school and the security simply isn’t anywhere good enough. This would be both their last year at school in this country because we’d already made the decision to leave the country before their next school year. My oldest wears a tiny discreet Star of David pendant. It’s so inoffensive to anybody but allows her to express her Jewish faith in a small way. When it was her turn in line to greet the family she would show around, the family was a Muslim family. My daughter has no personal issue with anybody and is friendly with two Muslim girls in her class who aren’t bothered by her being Jewish. But this family clearly were. In front of everyone, the father refused to be shown around by “a Jew”. He apparently, according to several parents and a teacher, raised his voice at her, and demanded that another child show them around. Instead of the head teacher condemning his behavior and telling him to leave, she asked my daughter to step aside and asked another pupil to show them around. Nobody except other parents, non Jewish parents, came to my daughter to ask if she was even ok. She was in a flood of tears, frightened and confused. My wife got a phone call from another parent and insisted she would go fetch our daughter because she already knew what I would do had I gone there myself. But this is what we live in now. This is the new normal. For reasons of what will come next, I won’t name the school. But this is going to escalate, a lot.