Sir, I am amazed that the new Commission on Integration and Cohesion is not allowed to consider faith schools. Is this due to the influence of its chair, Ruth Kelly?

The Government, in its first flush of multiculturalism, allowed new exclusive faith schools to be established and funded by the state. Since then one Sikh, one Hindu, one Greek Orthodox, a small number of Christian Evangelical and Jewish, and six Muslim schools have been approved. There are 100 Muslim schools waiting to apply. Their entrance criteria are explicit: the purpose is to create a total Muslim personality, and the required familiarity with the Koran means that non-Muslims would not be acceptable.

Future generations will regret these new exclusive faith schools, whether Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish or Christian, since to separate children at the ages of 5 and 11 according to their religion inevitably leads, as Northern Ireland has shown, to separatism. This is not a problem for Anglicans, since all Anglican schools are inclusive.

The Education Bill, which encourages the establishment of new schools, returns to the House of Lords in October, and several of us from all sides will try to persuade the Government that no new school should be exclusive to one faith. We accept that we cannot change the arrangements for existing faith schools, but any new ones must be inclusive.

LORD BAKER OF DORKING
Education Secretary, 1986-89
House of Lords

Sir, I agree with Ruth Kelly in excluding faith schools from the work of her commission.

Children cannot be taught in a religious and moral vacuum, merely learning “about” values: children have to be trained to respect values, whether religious or secular, and if the teacher allows for the children’s growing ability to reason then they are not being “indoctrinated.” If we did abolish faith schools, our schools would not cease to teach values, but would all teach the values of secularism, itself one of today’s competing faiths.

Britain has had Christian faith schools for centuries, and we have achieved a compromise between social cohesion and religious freedom by agreeing on one non-negotiable value: the supremacy in secular matters of the Crown in Parliament.

DAVID J. CRITCHLEY
Winslow, Bucks

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