School ban for boy with moustache

Akaash said he thinks he is too young to start shaving

A 14-year-old boy has been banned from a Manchester secondary school for growing a moustache.

Akaash Iqbal, 14, of Fallowfield, said Manchester Academy told him to leave and not return until he had shaved off his facial hair.

Akaash said he does not want to shave and that the incident has left him "embarrassed and left out".

Manchester Academy said it has rules on personal appearance and dress which students are expected to follow.

'Slippery slope'

Asif Mahmood, Akaash's father, said: "He's only a kid, he's got many years ahead of him.

"There's major things going on around the world and what we're talking about is moustaches.

"I mean what kind of world are we living in?

"I am not going to make him have a shave if he doesn't want to."

Joe Langley, Salford secretary of teaching union NASUWT, said: "Unless you start somewhere and make children abide by a code that's the start of the slippery slope if you let them get away with it.

"All the school [Manchester Academy] is trying to do is enforce standards and I would have thought everyone would be onside with that."

Last summer parents received letters from the headteacher at Baines School in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, about fake tan.

The headteacher asked that girls did not come to school "looking varying shades of orange".