In mid-December, Skurup's municipal council voted through a ban on wearing "headscarves, burkas, niqabs and other items of clothing that have the purpose of concealing students and staff" at elementary schools and preschools in the municipality, following a proposal from the Sweden Democrats.
The decision was made despite the fact that the municipality's school administration considers the ban impossible to implement because, according to them, it violates a number of laws.
A similar ban has already been voted through in another Scanian municipality, Staffanstorp.
This applies to children in preschool and primary school up to sixth grade.
“We do nothing”
The decision was met with strong reactions and demonstrations both in Skurup and in other locations.
Mattias Liedholm, principal of one of Skurup's largest elementary schools, says, however, that the ban will have no practical consequences at all.
- In practice, we do nothing.
The politicians are our employers and we want to follow their guidelines as far as possible.
But at the same time, you cannot make a decision that goes against current legislation, he told SVT Nyheter Skåne in January.
In February, Mattias Liedholm noted that the headscarf ban had the opposite effect and that the number of students wearing headscarves had increased at the school.
"Restrictions must be made by law"
The Swedish National Agency for Education shares the assessment that general veil bans in schools violate, among other things, the freedom of religion found in the European Convention and the Swedish constitution.
"It is certainly possible to limit basic freedoms and rights.
But such restrictions must be made by law by the Riksdag," they write in an email to SVT.
In SVT's program "The Meeting", two people with widely differing opinions on the veil ban meet. The politician Loubna Stensåker Göransson (M) voted through the decision and the teacher Naouel Aissaoi refuses to take off the veil. See the entire program on SVT Play.