She worked at the school for 20 years before retiring in The job itself is tough anyway, but I was really driven to make it as successful as I could, particularly of this responsibility that I felt, being one of the first Muslim heads to not just do it well enough to be recognised as a good headteacher and a good school, but really so that I could show to people that you could be from any background and be a very positive role model, particularly for Newham students, and also people from the Muslim community.
As a strong role model she also wanted to show that part of her identity was related to the culture and the background of Pakistan where she was born, so she wore her shalwar kameez, a traditional dress for Pakistani women to show her heritage. She told them if there were any issues with any of the students to call her and not the police. We were having students going on to medicine, law, all the different professions, we had students going to Oxford and Cambridge, so the whole horizon was really increased for our students in that time.
Plashet students giving their thanks to their brilliant Headteacher. Bushra strongly believes that schools should not work in isolation and should be seen as part of the whole community and that knowledge should be shared.
Plashet gained Leading Edge status in Plashet sought a determination to be able to offer different acts of worships and ran Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Christian assemblies, lead by different faith leaders, as well as running multi-faith assemblies.
The students were free to choose from any of the assemblies. The whole school would also come to together for different celebrations such as Eid, Diwali, or Christmas. It was a lot of organisation, but it was important to Bushra that all the communities were treated fairly which was picked up by Ofsted as very good practice.
