Faith schools 'consistent with multiculturalism'

Tuesday, 26 July 2005 12:00 AM

Tony Blair today rejected suggestions that faith schools could contribute to increased community tensions.

He told reporters at his monthly press conference that religious schools were "perfectly consistent" with a multicultural and multiracial society such as in Britain.

Following news that homegrown terrorists were responsible for the London attacks on July 7th, critics have suggested segregating children of different faiths does little to improve community relations.

Earlier this month, Coun Lawrence, Birmingham's cabinet member for education, said the city should actively discourage more faith schools from being created on the basis that they are "not the best way of developing social cohesion".

However, today Mr Blair rejected calls for Muslim schools in Britain to be closed down, warning that this would require all religious schools to be closed, something that was not politically feasible.

"It is perfectly consistent with a society being integrated and us being multicultural, multiracial and multi-religious for people to desire to have their children educated in the realms of their own faith," said the prime minister, who sent his children to Catholic schools.

"I don't think that, if part of proper state system, [faith schools] do actually teach children to look at children from other faith schools in a different way. The reason children often like them is that there is a very strong sense of ethos and values in their schools.

"They're not taught against other religions and sometimes I think it's better to have a formal Muslim faith school than to end up having people of one faith in one particular school but without any of the safeguards and involvement of responsible people around it."

Mr Blair's view is echoed by the Conservatives, who believe parents should be allowed to send their children to one of Britain's more than 270 faith schools as long as those schools are properly regulated.

"In the proposals that we put forward at the last election we stated we wanted to encourage new faith schools to be established, and to be supported by taxpayer funding," a spokeswoman said.

"We also recognised, however, that it was important that such schools should not be divisive, and we proposed that they would have to teach the National Curriculum, accept Ofsted inspection, and demonstrate a commitment to community cohesion."

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