Dangerous stuff. Ban all religous schools they only serve to indoctrinate children with nonsense. All schools should teach about the spectrum of religions demonstrating that they can't all be right, and perhaps all are wrong.

roger, london,

Banned, Banned, Banned, Banned, Banned.
sorry about the lack of informed, sensible, considered debate, but have you read their books? have you heard what they want to teach? have you encountered their science? their poiltics? their social studies?

Kevin Kennie, Glasgow,

Many of the comments so far show a forgetting of the role christian schools played among the urban poor in late 19th century and twentieth century Britain until the 1960s. The churches with their primary and sometimes secondary schools catered for the indigenous working classes and immigrant groups like the Irish, the Italians and West Indians among others.

Where church-related schools can go today really depends on the population segments where they are situated. Some church schools, especially in the secondary sector, have been too successful regarding discipline and public exam results, so they have gentrified and the middle class covet them for their social rather than spiritual uses. Othe church schools cater for a wider social net and have multiracial, multireligious and multiclass enrolements.

Garry Brown, Leeds,

Get real and stop talking as if all religions were the same. Islam is radically different to Christianity, and the very hard liners are dominating mosques, the 'muslim council of Britain' is a self appointed group of very conservative Muslims. Inculcating the Koran, with no hint of critical questioning, into young heads, is a recipe for future radicalisation.
And of course, ghettoisation is well under way.
No, of course not - no more faith schools at all. And RCs, bad luck, get your religion at mass not at schools the rest of us pay for.
C of E Schools are not very religious anyway.
School chaplains are the answer, not separate schools - and any properly religious person would agree, rather than seeking selfish sectarian advantage at such a great cost to the harmony of society as a whole. But then these Imams and priests don't care about society as a whole, only the forwarding of their 'faith' at tax payers' expense.

Torqemada, Cowley, UK

I disagree with the central premise of this article. Does the author know what Islam teaches? That the last two chapters (suras) of the Koran are all about warfare and treatment of non-moslems and war 'booty'? That Jihad as violent struggle to force all the world to submit to Islam is at the core of Islam's teachings? That the Koran has, literally, HUNDREDS of verses railing against Jews, Christians, pagans (which Islam considers Hindus and Buddhists to be) and that it calls the central tenet of Christianity, the Crucifixion, a "lie"? Will these schools remove all that from the Koran? What of the life of Muhammad in the ahadith: his career as a warlord, his acts of executing and ordering others to execute any and all who opposed him, his rapes, his condoning rapes by his armies, his 'marriage' to a 6 yr old and 'consummating' it when she was 9 and he 54, his mandating for slavery? And his call to forcibly convert, subjugate or kill all non-moslems? Do you truly want this taught?

Thomas Paine, london,

We have reached a typically British (ie muddled) situation in education as in so many other things. Can the solution be to add further anomalies? I suggest not. The US model where a public school is, by definition, agnostic might be a good starting point. Private interest self funded schools could be permitted but subject to comprehensive inspection including a public interest test.

TG Webb, saintfield, n ireland

What's the point of worrying about the financing of institutions in which the main subject taught will be hatred of the host nation? What we should be aiming for is the withdrawal of state financing from all so-called faith schools.If parents want their children to attend a school where religion of any brand is taught formally (as opposed to the historical study of the history of religions) they should put their hands in their own pockets and not in those of hard-pressed taxpayers.

Asmodeus, London,

Why do we have to put up with this faith based drivel?

Religion should be kept out of schools altogether. This is the 21st century now. It's time to move on and grow up and be suspicious of any organised religion especially where our children are concerned. The reason for any faith based school is simply to get the children to believe in their pathetic made up fairy stories at as early an age as possible instead of using the time properly.

State funded sectarianism is all it is and I object to income tax being used towards it.

Religion has had its day and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Ken, Houston, Scotland

This piece has got me seething. Since when has it been the government's job to ensure that innocent children are indoctrinated with the superstitious beliefs of their parents? The reason that "faith schools", or perhaps we should call them "superstition schools", are so popular is that pushy, middle-class parents pull every lever to get their children in, to the extent that they will feign piety and start attending Sunday services. On your knees to avoid the fees. When Muslims see this, they of course want this for themselves. The population of the UK is already self-segregating on ethnic and religious lines with great dangers for the future. The last thing the government should be doing is encouraging this by marshalling children into ghettos denominated by the religion of their parents.

Stewart Ware, London, UK