Religious schools in the Netherlands may not ban Muslim pupils from wearing headscarves simply if it contradicts their core values, the cabinet said on Tuesday in answer to questions from the anti-Islam PVV.

‘The freedom of education refers primarily to the process of giving education. Special schools can place demands on the participation in that education, if this is necessary to realise their core values,’ home affairs minister Piet Hein Donner and education minister Marja van Bijsterveldt said in a statement.
In addition, the argument that the wearing of headscarves shows a lack of equality between men and women gets equally short-shrift from the ministers. ‘Fashion dictates all sorts of differences between the way men and woman dress,’ the ministers said.
Meanwhile, a Muslim girl at the centre of a row over her headscarf at a Catholic school in Volendam has agreed to cover her head in the assembly hall and in school corridors only, the Telegraaf reports.