A primary school in the United Kingdom has banned the popular story of The Three Little Pigs and their escape from the big bad wolf, on the concern that the references to pigs might offend the Muslim pupils.

The head teacher of Park Road Infant School in the Yorkshire town of Batley, has removed all books containing stories about pigs, including the fairy tale and the talking pig 'Babe', from the classrooms of children aged under seven.

Barbara Harris claims it had been school policy for seven years to avoid telling the stories to young Muslim children, following complaints from Muslim parents and the books had been removed after a teacher had accidentally breached the policy.

Local Muslims have condemned the move as 'nonsense', as the Koran permits followers of Islam to talk or read about pigs as long as they do not eat their meat.

Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra a member of the Muslim Council of Britain, who agreed that the Koran contains references to pigs, said, "I wish schools would consult the religious authorities before doing these things."

The chairman of the Indian Muslim Welfare Society in Batley, Ibrahim Dockrat, said he is puzzled and the school policy appeared to be a knee-jerk reaction to complaints from some parents. "I am surprised that it has been blown out of proportion, that they would have acted in this way. If you are going to use religion, you need to be able to substantiate that by seeking religious guidance from properly qualified people."

Mrs Harris has defended the policy, saying she was merely trying to ensure respect for pupils' religious sensitivities, although she did concede it might be time to review it.

She said, "Approximately 60 per cent of the children attending are Pakistani or Indian origin and 99 per cent of these are of the Muslim faith. The remaining 40 per cent of children are mostly from the white community with some Bosnian Muslim, some mixed-race and some Sikh children.

She added that the school is fortunate to have a variety of children and the pupils on the whole are sensitive to each other's needs.

But she said she had only recently become aware of an occasion when young Muslim children were read stories about pigs. She said she then sent a memo to staff stating that fiction books containing pigs should be removed from early years and key stage one classrooms so that such a mistake would not happen again.

She said, "The books remain in the school library and there is nothing to stop our youngest children reading stories such as Three Little Pigs in small groups. The memo made it clear that older children [seven years and above] can be expected to make informed choice about their reading material.

"I very much regret that anyone should find this controversial as all we are doing is trying hard and reasonably successfully to ensure all of our children are awarded the respect that all human beings deserve," she added.