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Independent investigation into events at Batley Grammar School starts in April

Batley Grammar School

By: Pramod Thomas

AN independent investigation into events at Batley Grammar School in West Yorkshire will start in April, the trust which runs the school has said.

Protests were held at the school after a teacher showed pupils a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on 22 March. Protesters said the cartoon had offended ‘the whole Muslim community’.

The Batley Multi Academy Trust said the investigation would review how ‘the materials (which caused offence) were used’, reported the BBC.

The trust added that the investigation would make recommendations in relation to the religious studies curriculum.

An independent panel would be appointed to start work on 12 April, with any outcomes expected by the end of May, the BBC report added.

The incident at the school in West Yorkshire, which has a large Muslim community, came after a teacher in France was murdered in October by a radical Chechen teenager for showing cartoons of the prophet to students during a lesson on free speech.

The image shown at Batley Grammar School was taken from the same series of cartoons first published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose Paris office was attacked in 2015 by Islamic extremists, leaving 12 people dead, reported Sky News.

The school’s head teacher Gary Kibble previously apologised ‘unequivocally’ for the caricature being shown, adding that the member of staff had ‘given their most sincere apologies’ and been suspended pending an investigation.

In 2019, Muslim parents staged protests at a primary school in the central city of Birmingham after it held lessons incorporating same-sex relationships and transgender issues.