Arrested for not speaking Urdu in a British School

This is Antony Edkins. He is the Headmaster at Harrop Fold High School in Worsley, Greater Manchester.

Recently, Mr Edkins had a school girl, one of his pupils, arrested.

Codie Stott, the Schoolgirl in question, was attending a GCSE Science class.

As part of the class activities, Ms Stott was placed into a smaller discussion group with a number of other pupils.

After a short time, Ms Stott had asked, very reasonably, that her teacher consider the possibility of altering the group arrangements.

Why?

Well, 4 out of the 5 other pupils she was supposed to be in the 'discussion' group with were unable to speak English. After a brief period, all 5 of the other pupils were holding the 'discussion' in what is believed to have been Urdu.

When Ms Stott pointed out to her teacher that she was unable to comprehend a single word of the 'discussion', the teacher "started shouting and screaming, saying 'It's racist, you're going to get done by the police.'"

Ms Stott was then held in isolation, in the school, for the remainder of the day.

Antony Edkins, pictured above, then decided that he would notify the police, and notified the community police officer who is based at the school.

Over a week later, Ms Stott was arrested.

She was taken to Swinton Police Station, where she was arrested, and the police took fingerprints, photographs and a DNA sample from the 14 year old school girl.

Codies mother, Nicola, says "Codie was taken to the police station and kept in custody for over six hours while they questioned her."

Ms Stott was released without charge.

Last night Robert Whelan, deputy director of the Civitas think-tank, said: "It's obviously common sense that pupils who don't speak English cause problems for other pupils and for teachers. A lot of these arrests don't result in prosecutions - they aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say."

The school had the worst GCSE results in the entire Salford LEA last year with just 15 per cent of pupils achieving five good passes including English and maths, a third of the national average.