MADRID, Feb 18: Classmates cheered as a Muslim girl at the centre of a row over her right to wear a headscarf to school arrived wearing a hijab on Monday after Spanish education authorities ruled in her favour.

The thirteen-year-old, who is the daughter of Moroccan immigrants, was told last week she could not wear a headscarf to her secondary school at San Lorenzo de El Escorial, west of Madrid, because the headmistress said the scarf was a symbol of “sexual discrimination”.

But the adviser to Madrid’s education authority overruled head teacher Celia Duro’s decision.

“If the education adviser rules that it’s ideal for a child to come to school in a veil, obviously I can’t go against the orders of my superiors,” Duro told reporters on Monday.

“I repeat that it’s not good from the point of view of education or integration,” she added.

Friction over issues of cultural integration have recently come to the fore in Spain, a Catholic country with a growing population of Muslim immigrants, most of whom are Moroccans.

Education Minister Pilar del Castillo stoked the row over the weekend, saying immigrants’ children should adapt to Spanish customs in an interview published in the La Razon daily.

But Madrid’s educational adviser and members of Spain’s Islamic Council sought to heal the rift on Monday, opting to dedicate the girl’s first day at the school to a spirit of religious tolerance.—Reuters