'Faith schools' seem very much like an oxymoron to me, at least taking 'school' in it's modern usage. How can one follow a religion that strongly and yet teach impartially? I am not saying that teachers should not allowed to be religious - the best teacher I had was very strongly Christian (and is now an assistant pastor) - but when a school is composed solely of teachers like this, it inevitably stifles dissent among their pupils, and restricts them from developing their own beliefs, which may or may not be very closely related to any religion.

It is also the restrictions as to who can go to a faith school which unsettle me. Diversity and difference are the spice of life. Without different opinions, life would be very boring. Luckily, my religious teacher understood this, and also ran the school Debating Society, with which I got involved. One of the most regular issues which arose was religion - various aspects, such as whether it was a good thing, and if God existed etc, and many issues debated often had a religious side to them, such as abortion. When he was in these debates, he always argued from his religious viewpoint (and we had an athiest teacher who also often took part in many of these deabtes) but he was always willing to listen to the views and opinions of the opposing side - and that is what faith schools lack. There is no opposing side at all.

School takes up a great amount of time in a child's life and even though, if they go to a faith school, their parents will be at least moderately religious, school is always an important period of formation of a person's life. A child needs to get as much experience as possible of different views to able to maker their own, educated, decisions in life. And that is what school is about - education. School children need to be taught far more than just the "Three R's". If children are kept socially segregated in school, they will always find it hard to understand and live within society as a whole, which is not neatly homogenous, and increasingly sectarian.

Faith schools - of all religions - aid no-one, except maybe preventing that religion from having to compete in the free market nature of society for hearts and minds. Instead, they seem to wish to indoctrinate.

Trevor Phillips, chair of the CRE, defends faith schools on the grounds that:

“What the proponents of this view [that faith schools are incompatible with full social integration] really want to say is one of two things. One, a perfectly valid view, is that religion should be banned from the public sphere and practised only in private if at all.
The other, not at all valid in my view, is that Muslims can’t be trusted to run schools, like Christians have done for centuries."

What a load of bollocks. Religion is private thing, an should certainly be separate from the State, but it's demostration should not be crimianlised or sneered against. My view is that no religion can be fully "trusted" to run schools impartially. By definition they are not impartial. It makes no difference whether they are Muslim, Christian, Jew or even Jedi.