Conservatives Support the Growth of Faith Schools

The Conservative Education spokesman, Tim Collins, has put faith schools to the centre of the Tories' interests for the upcoming election, saying they want to see thousands of new faith schools opened up.

During the speech at a prize-giving ceremony at St Ambrose College, Altrincham, greater Manchester, he declared that faith schools will help to recover the moral drift of the country and put faith into the life of community.

As he said that faith schools provide higher standards: "Catholic, Church of England, Jewish and Islamic alike - consistently offer higher academic standards and a stronger ethos than purely secular schools. They are more likely to provide clear moral guidance and are more insistent upon school uniform and effective discipline - and for all these reasons are far more likely to be oversubscribed by parents eager and indeed anxious to get their children in."

"Yet the long-term consequences of the decades-long departure from faith and family are all too evident around us - broken homes, children without a moral compass, more drug usage, hundreds of thousands of abortions, feral scavenging youngsters preying on the old and vulnerable in their homes and on their streets."

The Conservative party have stated their policy to provide state support if the schools will accept Ofsted inspections, teach the national curriculum and admit a minimum of 10% of pupils from other faiths or those with no faith.

The Labour party will support faith schools where parents demand for them, and they will be financed with other state schools, as long as pupils will not be banned on the basis of their faith.

The Liberal Democrat education spokesman Phil Willis said: "The Liberal Democrats are committed to providing all children with a quality local school and we recognise both the popularity and the success of many faith schools. We do not and have not advocated their removal from state funding."

The head of the Ofsted English education inspectorate, David Bell upset some of the Muslim groups as he made a speech on citizenship at the Hansard society in January saying that religious segregations in schools "must not put our coherence at risk."

He mentioned the rapid growth, especially of Muslim faith schools and used excerpts from his upcoming annual report that states that Muslim schools must adjust their curriculum to help pupils "acquire an appreciation of and respect for other cultures in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony".