Our Supporters

• Baroness Tessa Blackstone, Minister for Education (1997-2001) and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich

• Professor Colin Blakemore, Fellow of the Royal Society and former chief executive of the British Medical Research Council (MRC)

• Reverend Jeremy Chadd, Vicar of St Chad’s Church, Sunderland, in the Diocese of Durham. Regional Tutor for Practical Theology in the North-East Oecumenical Course.

“The Church of England seems to me to delude itself, and to suffer from a dissonance between its words and its actions on church schools. We speak of serving the whole community, but actually serve our own interests. From within that church, I long for a more Christ-like engagement with education, in the service of all, and without a hidden agenda.”

• Dr. Amanullah De Sondy Assistant Professor in World Religions Department of Philosophy and Religion Ithaca College, New York

“I started my academic career in Islamic Studies as a Scottish born Muslim teacher of Religious Education in Scotland and have taught, advised and written on the subject. I firmly believe that an integrated education has the potential to create the most invigorating experience for a new generation of kids, in which they reflect on their own experiences at school and their life at home (or in their communities) and that will lead to them strengthening their own uniqueness and in turn becoming a beacon of a progressive and flourishing Britain.”

• Rev Marie Dove Methodist minister in West Yorkshire, former Religious Studies teacher

“I am convinced that the perceived privilege afforded to church goers together with the hypocrisy encouraged by those who make the required number of attendances at the Parish Church until admission is achieved, is damaging to community relationships and casts doubt on the integrity of religious faith.”

• Lord Glentoran CBE DL, Conservative Peer

“I have had Northern Ireland as my home since the war and have seen the affect on communities living almost side by side of a totally segregated education system (Roman Catholic & Protestant). Never shall the twain meet or ever come to understand each other.”

• Rabbi David Goldberg OBE

“In my view, building new faith schools, of whatever religion, is the least helpful answer to tackling the challenges of multiculturalism in a modern, democratic society, or providing schoolchildren of diverse cultures with the most effective tools to enable them to become integrated citizens of their host country.”

• Lord Graham of Edmonton, Labour Peer

• Professor A.C. Grayling, philosopher and author

• Savitri Hensman, equalities adviser in the care sector. Writer on Christian social ethics and theology.

“Some in minority communities have not always been well served by ‘inclusive’ state schools. The answer however is to increase the quality of education for all in state-funded education, not an approach that ultimately further marginalises such communities.”

• Sarah Hill, Global relief and development worker. Founder member of Accepting Evangelicals.

“Christians have nothing to fear from equality and justice in schooling, because those practices are at the heart of the Gospel message. My experience in Northern Ireland during the troubles convinced me just how vital integrated education is, if potentially destructive barriers between people and communities are going to be overcome.”

• Theo Hobson, theologian, author and commentator

“The Church of England’s current educational policy is undermining its old claim to be the church of the entire community. It has to drop all selection on the basis of church attendance. Otherwise it remains a force for division not unity in the local community.”

• Reverend Chris Howson, Anglican priest, Bradford

“I believe that all children should have equal access to the best quality education. Schools that select on the basis of belief and background in effect put up barriers to that.”

• Sunny Hundal, journalist and blogger

“I oppose discrimination on the basis of religion and think every school should have a mix of students so people can come in contact with “other” students.”

• Cllr. Darren Johnson, Green Party London Assembly Member

“Segregated schools makes as much sense as segregated buses or segregated hospitals. Rather than creating more schools to serve particular ethnic, religious and social groups and then having to come up with ever more ways of tackling the social and cultural division that inevitably comes from their very separateness, the state should instead ensure that all of its schools are made suitable for children of all backgrounds, regardless of their or their parents religious and non-religious beliefs.”

• Professor Steve Jones, University College London

• Professor Sir David King, former Chief Scientific Advisor to HM Government

• Rev Richard Kirker, Prominent Christian campaigner for equal rights

“Faith schools have become a tarnished brand as within the majority of them stalks the unacceptable side of faith – unchecked homophobia. No public money should be used to condone covert discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.”

• Hari Kunzru, author

“I believe that one of the main functions of school is to place children outside the limited social and cultural context of home, and allow them to interact with other people whose experiences and values may be very different. As preparation for life, the benefit of this is self-evident. As preparation for functioning in a society like Britain, it is more important than ever before. While religious schools may provide a good level of academic education, their role in narrowing the social experience of their pupils is deeply troubling. Hence I’m supporting this much needed campaign in the name of an open educational system, free of discrimination and prejudice.”

• Naomi Long MP is a member of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and became her party’s first MP elected to the House of Commons in May 2010. Her party is Northern Ireland’s largest non-sectarian party, and both she and her party are long standing supporters of integrated education, where children of all faiths and none are educated together in a shared learning environment.

• Dr Caroline Lucas MP, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales

“I am delighted to support and join the Accord Coalition. Schools should not be a source of social division, but be as diverse a place as the local community from which they draw their pupils and aid the growth of mutual understanding.”

• Rev Iain McDonald, Minister of Southernhay United Reformed Church, Exeter

“In addition to the discrimination that is inevitably involved, the current system also encourages hypocrisy. There are those who attend church in order that their children qualify for admission to a particular school and never set foot in the church again after the children have been accepted.”

• Fiona Millar, journalist and high-profile education campaigner

• Sir Jonathan Miller CBE, author, theatre director and humorist

“There is something subversive and schismatic about the idea of schools committed to one particular religion. As a non-believer I am in favour of including the study of varied religions as a standard part of a civilised curriculum.”

• Manzoor Moghal, Chairman of the Muslim Forum

“‘Governments should not promote separation in our education system, but instead should promote equality. Equality cannot come about through faith schools because by their very nature they promote privilege and discrimination.”

• Fiyaz Mughal, Advisor to the Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Interfaith and Preventing Radicalism and Extremism, Cllr for Noel Park – London Borough of Haringey

“I completely agree with the aims of Accord and am happy to support its excellent work in the future”

• Philip Pullman, author

“Every society needs to provide schools that educate all its future citizens to live together, understanding one another’s differences and building on what we all have in common. To set up schools that separate children according to the beliefs of their parents is to say “We are happy to live in a nation where people don’t speak to one another, a society that subsidises and encourages mutual fear and ignorance, a country where religious intolerance is more important than any other factor in education.” I don’t want to live in a society like that, and I don’t think most people do either. The only way education can be truly open to everyone is if it is secular, and if it’s accepted that religion has no special privileges there.”

• Brian Pearce, former Chair of the Buddist Council of Wales and Buddhist Chaplain to Parc, Swansea & Cardiff prisons, as well as former member of the Interfaith Council for Wales and Welsh Assembly Government’s Faith Communities Forum

“It is my personal view that in a democratic multi-cultural society the state should not be funding segregation, privilege and discrimination. Our children should be learning together and learning to live together. Why divide them on the basis of religion when there is so much to share?”

• Reverend Professor Christopher Rowland, Dean Ireland Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford

“Churches should be championing social justice and equality for all in education, not privileging their own.”

• Sir Richard Roberts, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Medicine

“I strongly oppose the idea of schools that are segregated by faith. In my view schools should be based on secular principles where if religion is to be taught it should be within the context of sociology. Then the origins of religion and comparisons among different religions can be treated in a disinterested fashion without giving credence to the idea that any one religion outweighs all others. Only in this way can children be allowed to study religion in a critical and unbiased manner and with the tools and data necessary for them to make up their own minds about the credibility of religious belief.”

• Professor Lord Smith of Clifton, Liberal Democrat Peer and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ulster (1991/99).

“I am a communicant Anglican but I am a secularist with regard to schooling. Having lived in Northern Ireland during the 1990s I have witnessed first hand the very deletarious effects of sectarian education. It is a major block there impeding the development of a fully mature civil society and democratic polity. With the increasing numbers of faith-based schools in GB there is a real danger of a growing and necessarily divisive sectarian element in Britain. This is why I fully support the aims of Accord.”

• Polly Toynbee, President of the British Humanist Association and journalist

“Faith schools reduce all families’ choice of schools, cream off the best pupils, obliging the non-religious to cheat and pretend. They do have a special ethos: it’s called keeping out more of the free school meals children. They are a state sponsored way for churches to fill their empty pews with anxious new parents kneeling to Gods they don’t believe in.”

• David Ward, Member of Parliament for Bradford East

“In places such as Bradford segregation in the school system can serve to undermine social cohesion. Schools should be at the centre of their community and draw it pupils from across the community they serve, where parents mix at the gates and children mix and learn together. To help achieve this state funded schools should be made open and suitable for all children, regardless of their of their family’s beliefs, and on this basis I fully support the aims of Accord”.