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A senior councillor has demanded the closure of a troubled Birmingham school after its segregation policy was ruled unlawful .

Tory Matt Bennett, the city’s shadow cabinet member for education, called for Al-Hijrah School in Bordesley Green , to be shut down following the Court of Appeal’s ruling yesterday (Friday).

In a landmark ruling with national implications, three judges backed Ofsted inspectors who viewed that the segregation of boys and girls amounted to discrimination.

Coun Bennett (Con, Edgbaston) said the affair reflected badly on the council-maintained school, the local authority, Ofsted and the Department for Education.

He said the school’s reputation was “tarnished” after it was placed in special measures in 2014.,

Its entire governing body was sacked the following year after it emerged the school was £3 million in debt.

The case came to court after Ofsted produced a summer 2016 report that found there was discrimination under equality laws.

At an earlier hearing, judge Mr Justice Jay said books discovered in the school library clearly treated women “as subordinate to men”.

Coun Bennett said: “The school has, to say the least, a tarnished reputation and, with it once again having been rated inadequate, it is beyond dispute that the council’s efforts have failed to bring about the necessary improvements.

“It really would be in the best interests of all concerned, not least the pupils who have been failed by the school and the council, if the school were closed down in a managed and orderly fashion.”

Responding to the ruling, the council said “many other” faith schools around the country practiced gender separation and “none had been downgraded by Ofsted” as a result.

Colin Diamond, the authority’s corporate director of children and young people, said Al-Hijrah was “being held to a different standard to many other schools with similar arrangements”.

He said: “We have a strong history of encouraging all schools to practice equality in all its forms and would robustly tackle any discrimination.

“But the issue here is about schools being inspected against unclear and inconsistent policy and guidelines.

“This is not a case where boys and girls were being treated differently.

“Ofsted found that boys and girls were treated equally.”

“If it is national policy that schools practising gender separation are considered to be discriminating against pupils, then local authorities and the schools themselves clearly need to be told so they know what standards they are being inspected against.

But Ofsted said the school was practising “discrimination”.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman said: “Educational institutions should never treat pupils less favourably because of their sex, or for any other reason.

“The school is teaching boys and girls entirely separately, making them walk down separate corridors, and keeping them apart at all times.

“This is discrimination and is wrong.

“It places these boys and girls at a disadvantage for life beyond the classroom and the workplace, and fails to prepare them for life in modern Britain.”