MY LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH SCHOOLING

My daughter was in a frenzy for more than three months around May this year when she found out a school here allowed students to wear hijab. Without my knowledge, she had gone up to a teacher and asked if she could wear hijab there as a student when she went there for a writing workshop after getting into the finals of the school's writing competition which we entered because we thought the prize was attractive. What followed was her obsession to get a place there.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that students all over the island have been preparing for such direct entry from primary one and before the workshop, we have not done anything in that direction. 
So, she handled almost everything in the application, including liaising with administration, and actually applied for two disciplines. My only contribution was a portfolio of sorts of what we have been doing at home and an annual report to the education ministry. The skeptic (or realist?) in me prepared for her heartbreak. She was shortlisted for the talent academy but did not get a place and things calmed down in time for the national primary school exams. 
So, earlier in the year, her mother was also trying to do the impossible- writing in to ask as a parent that students be allowed to wear hijab in schools in the most civilised manner. I was left hanging with textbook answers rejecting my pleas and reasoning which did not make logical sense and even conflict themselves. No surprises there.
The school that my daughter applied to is not under the ministry the rest of the schools here are. While I personally have no knowledge of any students donning the hijab there, my daughter had asked three teachers who replied in the affirmative. 
Clearly, the policy will have various effects on all students and is part of a hidden curriculum that teaches students that harmony is only achievable by being the same and that you can be rejected from a space everyone else can go to because you do not look like everyone else. 
Other than this issue, the pollution, the crowded conditions and lack of nature. I love this country. There's hardly any politics.