The Commons children, schools and families select committee will grill the schools secretary, Ed Balls, at a meeting on January 9 about the government's plans to allow local authorities to open as many faith schools as they want.
Members are concerned the plans will damage social cohesion and widen existing divisions.
The committee's chairman, Barry Sheerman, said: "Faith schools are an important area of concern. This is something the government should look at in a focused way, rather than drifting into the proliferation of faith education.
"I am getting reports from people in local government who find it difficult to know what is going on in some faith schools - particularly Muslim schools."
He said there was concern in local government about its ability to find out how well an important part of community was being served by its education provision.
"Will we find out that young people in certain kinds of faith school, and particularly young women, are not getting the provision or education that they deserve?"
In September, Balls promised money would be made available for about 100 independent Muslim schools to move into the state education system if they chose to do so.
The minister acknowledged demand for more school places from Hindu and Sikh families, as well as children of Catholic immigrants from eastern Europe.
The Church of England said earlier this year that it was aiming to open 100 semi-independent, state-funded city academies in England.
The general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Mary Bousted, said it was time the government answered "searching questions" about how its policies on faith schools fit with those on social cohesion.
"Unless there are crucial changes in the way many faith schools run we fear divisions in society will be exacerbated. In our increasingly multi-faith and secular society it is hard to see why our taxes should be used to fund schools which discriminate against the majority of children and potential staff because they are not of the same faith.
"Why should state-funded schools be allowed to promote a particular faith rather than educate children to understand and respect all faiths so they are well able to live in our diverse, multicultural society?"
Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said many faith schools' selection criteria "discriminate" against pupils from non-religious backgrounds.
But Chris Keates, general secretary of the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers, warned that the debate over Muslim faith schools risked fuelling Islamophobia.
"They need to be very careful how they handle this sensitive issue," she said.
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said faith schools were popular with parents and "can make an important contribution to community cohesion by promoting inclusion and developing partnerships with schools of other faiths, and with non-faith schools".
He said there is no policy to increase the number of faith schools, adding that it was up to local communities to decide the kind of schools they want.
"However, the government is clear that all schools - whether or not they have a religious character - have important roles to play in working with other schools and the wider community," he said.
"All maintained school governing bodies now have a duty to promote community cohesion and this element will be inspected by Ofsted."
4 comments:
The only way that the UK will solve this problem is to make any and all religious instruction of children under 18 a criminal offence with the same punishment as for paedophilia: both destroy innocent lives.
Yeah of course, and in place of religious instruction, place for homosexual instruction, anal sex instruction, fornication instruction, pornography instruction, tolerance for perversion etc...
With this sort of idea, dear samantha, Europe is definitively fuc.ed.
You don't need religion to teach the Golden Rule.
And, in Islamic schools you certainly won't hear about the Golden Rule, as it is against the Quran.
Anoymous ? That says it all. How can one possibly respond to such ignorance except to point to it.
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