Inclusion Summit to Improve Faith Communities Through Schools

Education Secretary Alan Johnson will meet with representatives of Britain's major religions for an "inclusion summit", to discuss how relations between faith communities can improve through schools.

Mr Johnson will go over the amendment tabled last week to the Government's Education Bill, which will give local authorities the power to require all new faith schools to admit up to 25 per cent of pupils from different religious backgrounds or of no religion at all.

Despite speculation to the contrary, he has no plans to extend the provision to cover faith schools already in existence.

Mr Johnson will discuss how faith schools can be made more inclusive, citing the examples of Liverpool's St Francis of Assisi School, which has an intake that is half Catholic and half Church of England, and the Guru Nanak School in west London - the UK's only state-funded Sikh school - which is changing its admission code to maintain a mixture of faiths among its pupils.

The summit will also review progress on last February's agreement by all the faith groups to teach in their schools an awareness of the tenets of other faiths.

And it will discuss what further steps could be taken to encourage community cohesion through faith schools and faith organisations.
The Church of England has already announced that its schools will voluntarily accept 25 per cent of pupils from other faiths or none, but the Roman Catholics have resisted the idea more firmly.

It is thought the majority of faith schools to be set up in coming years will be Islamic, leading to some complaints that the new law will be unfairly targeted at Muslims.

Mr Johnson will explain that the new legislation will not operate on the basis of quotas, but local preference and demand.

Where there is local opposition, a local authority will need the
consent of the Education Secretary to approve a new faith school with less than 25 per cent non-faith admissions.