The EYFS clearly lays out the importance of everyone receiving a friendly welcome in a nursery setting and staff working in close partnership with parents. This relationship should be founded on mutual respect with a positive attitude toward ethnic, cultural and social diversity. But some settings have found that the wearing of a niqab, a Muslim headscarf (see box) obscuring the face, can pose a challenge for practitioners.
The national media recently reported how a mother was escorted off school premises for refusing to remove a veil for religious reasons, and childcarers have expressed safety concerns over identifying adults wearing a niqab before allowing them to enter the nursery premises, or collect children.
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