Researchers who interviewed a group of Muslim mothers in the West Midlands found that only a minority of them saw these goals, and the ability to “fill in forms”, as the primary purpose of education - and they all sent their daughters to a state school.

The mothers who had daughters in an Islamic school were more ambitious for the girls and wanted them to gain enough educational qualifications to be economically independent if the need arose.

Audrey Osler, a lecturer in education at the University of Birmingham, and Zahida Hussain, headteacher of the Al-Furqan independent girls’ school in Birmingham, interviewed 20 Muslim mothers of girls aged seven to nine. Ten had chosen an independent Islamic school, while the others had enrolled their daughters in a nearby state primary.

Writing in the latest issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education, Osler and Hussain acknowledge that some Muslim girls’ schools have been criticised for prioritising Islamic principles at the expense of academic achievement. They quote one Bradford head who said in 1992 that: “Sacrifices have to be made. I’m not sad that those girls left with no qualifications, but proud; they have the satisfaction of knowing that they did something for someone else.”

The low pass rates recorded by some Islamic girls’ schools in this year’s GCSE exams (“Performance Tables”, TES, November 24) may suggest that both the schools and their parents still adopt this attitude, but Osler and Hussain’s research shows how dangerous it is to jump to such conclusions. They found that the mothers who had selected an Islamic school for their daughters were a culturally heterogeneous group; five of the 10 were converts to Islam, and two were Afro-Caribbean. Five were in paid employment - three were teachers - whereas none of the state school mothers had a job.

Several of the Islamic school mothers stressed the importance of the partnership between school and home, particularly in the area of values education. Some had rejected the idea of “topping up” a state school education by sending their daughters to a supplementary school because it would compartmentalise their education.

One mother said: “Children are educated as a whole and not in bits. You cannot say, Qur’an at home, English at school. If you do this you are saying you are allowed to do what your non-Muslim friends do outside home, but when you come home you behave like a Muslim. You end up with a child who does not know who she is.”

The state school mothers recognised that their daughters were open to different sets of values at home and school but were confident that an English primary education would not hurt their daughters and were pleased by the school’s emphasis on honesty, sharing, loving and caring for others in the community. But several of them worried about the unofficial lessons in sexual morality that girls received at school.

Some of the state school mothers had also been upset by criticism from their family when their daughters were disrespectful to their elders. The Islamic school mothers seemed to have fewer anxieties of this kind but some admitted to financial worries because the Pounds 1,050-a-session school fees had put pressure on the family budget.

A few of the Islamic school mothers also worried about the uncertain future of Muslim schools. Some feared that the protective educational environment would not equip their daughters to cope with discrimination, although it would give them a sense of identity.

Osler and Hussain recommend that schools should involve parents in discussions on the values to be inculcated in the classroom and suggest that Muslims, particularly women, should be included on governing bodies.

“Muslim mothers and education”, by Audrey Osler and Zahida Hussain, appears in the November issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education. The full text of their paper is available, priced Pounds 10 including pp, from Carfax Publishing Company, PO Box 25, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX 14 3UE