"The challenge has been to persuade parents that just because we have a Muslim majority now of over 90 per cent, we don’t have to be a Muslim school," the school's principal Mohsen Ojja told the newspaper.
Ojja decided to halt gender segregation as the school’s standards were dropping. The parents did not accept the move, and even created an online petition, saying they had the right to decide how their children are educated.
Ojja said that such parents were a "quite militant, quite vociferous minority…with particularly strong views on religion."
"We have no religious denomination. If they wish to exercise their parental choice and go with a segregated model, then there are private Islamic schools in the area," Ojja told the newspaper.
In November, six independent Muslim schools were branded inadequate by education watchdog Ofsted, as they focused too heavily on Islamic teachings.
