Teachers push for end to single-faith state schools

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) launched radical new proposals on Tuesday to make space for preachers, imams, and rabbis in state schools as an alternative to the creation of more single-faith schools.

The NUT argues that faith schools undermine community relations by limiting the opportunity their students have to mix with children from different faith and non-faith backgrounds.

The proposals, laid out in the union's annual report and approved at its Manchester conference this week, also suggested that schools provide private prayer facilities for pupils, recognise religious holidays, and ease up on uniform policies so that religious pupils are able to incorporate aspects of their religions' dress into their uniform.

The NUT said that state schools should give their religious pupils the option of receiving "religious instruction" from imams, rabbis or priests and that the law stipulating that all schools provide a daily act of "mainly" Christian worship be opened up to include other religions.

The General Secretary of the NUT, Steve Sinnott, defended the proposals against opposition from secularists and religious leaders.

"I believe that there will be real benefits to all our communities and youngsters if we could find space within schools for pupils who are Roman Catholics, Anglican, Methodist, Jewish, Sikh and Muslim to have more religious instruction. You could have imams coming in, you could have the local rabbi coming in and the local Roman Catholic priest," he said.

A spokesman for the Church of England told Press Association, "Religious instruction belongs with the religious institutions, the churches, the mosques, the temples."

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said meanwhile that it was "outrageous" for a teaching union to propose the introduction of religious instruction in schools, according to The Guardian newspaper.

"If parents feel that strongly about religious instruction, it should happen in the home or place of worship."