LONDON: A complaint made by a Scottish minister that a local nursery discriminated against his daughter because of her Muslim name has been upheld by the country’s care watchdog.
Following a three-month investigation prompted by a complaint by Scottish Health Secretary Humza Yousaf, the country’s Care Inspectorate said Little Scholars nursery in the city of Dundee had failed to “promote fairness, equality and respect” in its handling of applications.
Yousaf and his wife Nadia El-Nakla complained to the inspectorate when the nursery repeatedly failed to assign a place to their daughter, despite offering spots to children with “white-sounding names.” The couple are also pursuing separate legal action against the nursery.
They said they became suspicious of Little Scholars when their daughter Amal was rejected twice in their applications for a space, while it confirmed to others without ethnic names that it had places available.
El-Nakla asked a friend to enquire with the nursery about a place for their child, who did not have an ethnic name, and they were told that spaces were available.
Yousaf reported the occurrences to local newspaper The Record, which investigated the nursery and carried out the same experiment.
Discussing what the paper had found, Yousaf tweeted that the reporter “created two profiles with kids same age, their requirements the same. ‘Aqsa Akhtar’ application was rejected while ‘Susan Blake’ was offered a choice of 4 afternoons.”
The Care Inspectorate said: “We have upheld a complaint in relation to this matter. We found that the service did not promote fairness, equality and respect when offering placements.
“Every child in Scotland has the right to good quality care that meets their needs and respects their rights.
“We have identified areas for improvement and we will follow up on these to check on progress.”
Little Scholars, the owners of which are of Asian heritage, denounced the inspectorate’s decision as “highly misleading” and said their lawyers are challenging it.
A statement by the owners’ spokesperson said: “As a small family business, we’re always looking at ways we can improve things. Whilst the Care Inspectorate found our admission procedure could be improved, this had nothing to do with discrimination or equality, and within a few days of becoming aware of Mr Yousaf and Ms El-Nakla’s complaint, we reviewed and updated our system for dealing with admissions.”
