The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair has been warned by one of his former advisors not to allow faith schools to become discriminative in the way they select pupils.
A director of government relations at Downing Street, Baroness Morgan has said that she feels “uneasy” about some of the ways that admissions are handled to single-religion schools. In particular, Morgan has expressed her worry that tolerance of other communities might not be taught well or encouraged within these types of schools, report The Guardian newspaper.The comments have come following a new publication this week by the Young Foundation think-tank, addressing the relationship between white and immigrant communities in East London. The publication warned that in certain areas where there are church schools, social segregation has resulted.
The new book entitled ‘The New East End’ concluded that in East London, the Roman Catholic schools had become ‘White Citadels’, with many stories of parents baptising children into Catholicism to ensure they got into the right school.
Last week Tony Blair continued negotiations over the government’s Schools White Paper, as the British premier discussed the banning of interviews of prospective parents of students, which is a practice that still remains amongst many faith schools.
Baroness Morgan, however, did admit to the House of Lords that faith schools were clearly very popular with parents, indicating the clear advantages could be seen. However, Morgan also called for stronger measures to be put in place that surpassed Blair’s plans simply to end the interviewing of parents. This, Morgan urged, would be required to ensure that poorer families did not miss out on places at faith schools.
Morgan explained that she gave her full-backing to the creation of more multi-faith schools that would admit children of all faiths under strong religious ethos.The Church of England came under attack at the beginning of the year, and found itself having to defend against claims that its secondary schools select and exclude pupils on social grounds.
