The Accord Coalition has urged the Government to not ignore the role of state funded schools following publication this week of its Counter Extremism Strategy. Designed with a particular focus on combating Islamic extremism, one of the four key planks of the Government’s strategy comprises ‘building more cohesive communities’.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘Among the strategies that the Prime Minister outlined to combat islamaphobia and Islamic extremism, surely another must be to prevent children being isolated from one another in schools of their own faith. Children from Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds should not be educated apart, but together. This applies to children from other religious and ethnic backgrounds, all who of whom would benefit from broader horizons by being at mixed schools.
The current law that new academy faith schools can only take a maximum of 50% of their pupils from any one faith could be extended to all schools, so as to encourage greater social cohesion. Let faith flourish at home and in places of worship, but not be used in school to divide the next generation.’
Ethnically mixed schools have been consistently found to boost the growth of mutual understanding, trust and tolerance, whereas religiously selective faith schools have been cited as a source of religious and ethnic segregation and tension. The 2001 ‘Cantle Report‘, which popularised the term community cohesion, was commissioned by the Home Office following race riots that year in Northern England towns between people of White British and South Asian heritage. It found local faith schools were operating religiously discriminatory policies ‘where religious affiliations protect cultural and ethnic divisions’ and recommended that all faith schools in England be required to admit people from other religious and non-religious backgrounds.
State funded faith schools form more than a third of the state funded school in England and Wales and often top local leagues tables, which has been put down to socially selective admission procedures. However, 98% of the schools are Christian, meaning for many Muslim people and those from other minority faith groups, the best local state schools are effectively closed to them.
