Rise in faith schools will create religious ghettos, warns head

Opening more faith schools to meet rising demand from ethnic minority families threatens to create religious ghettos, a leading headteacher warned today.

Ministers have indicated they will support hundreds of Muslim, Hindu and other groups that want to run state schools for children from their communities.

However, such a drive could awaken "the ghost of Northern Ireland", where segregated schools fuelled decades of conflict, the Rev Tim Hastie-Smith told the Standard.

Mr Hastie-Smith is the new chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of elite private schools, which includes Harrow, Winchester and Eton.

His warning comes days after England's first state-funded Hindu school opened in London.

Mr Hastie-Smith said schools would be negligent if they pretended the spiritual part of humans did not exist, but added that he was "not enthusiastic" about schools that became "exclusively" for pupils from a particular faith background. "I am not comfortable with schools which are saying, 'We will only take you on here if you fulfil particular faith criteria'. There is a defensiveness about that which is often very destructive and divisive," he said.

"One has to remember the experience of Northern Ireland - one of the deepest-rooted causes of divisiveness is the separateness of the education system."

Next year, Mr Hastie-Smith is to leave his post as head of the private Dean Close School in Cheltenham to lead a state-funded academy being sponsored by church schools group the United Learning Trust.

He said he supported the idea of schools that operated within a faith context, so pupils could grow up in a "structure" where they understand "right and wrong".

But he warned that strict faithbased admissions criteria could be dangerous. "We don't want Hindu, Muslim or fundamentalist Christian schools which are withdrawing their kids from society and thereby becoming antipathetic to the community." There are about 6,000 faith schools in England, with most being Church of England and Roman Catholic.

Ministers have backed dozens of new Christian city academies and offered support to Muslim and Hindu groups who want to set up state schools, arguing that it would be discriminatory to refuse.

The first state-funded Hindu school, Krishna-Avanti primary, opened in Edgware this week. The school gives priority for places to Hindu children but was forced to drop plans that would have required parents to be vegetarian and teetotal.

Many faith schools give places first to families who share the same religious beliefs, but they have been banned from interviewing parents or pupils under new rules. However, Children's Secretary Ed Balls warned this year that some faith schools were breaking the new laws, even demanding fees for what should be a free state education.