UK NEWS

BAN FAITH SCHOOLS DEMAND TEACHERS

Saturday April 14,2007

By Alison Little

Comment Speech Bubble Have your say(1)

TEACHERS have demanded that the Government drops plans for a new generation of State-funded faith schools.

They called for a ban on any such new schools, in defiance of Tony Blair’s backing for the idea of giving religious groups a bigger role in education.

But the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers’ annual conference in Belfast stopped short of demanding that existing faith schools should lose their public funding.

Brian Williams, from the union’s Cardiff branch, said: “Why should non-religious taxpayers like me fund faith schools?

“Would parents believe that their taxes were well-spent on a Marxist school?”

He said that the Government recognised Scientology as a religion, which would entitle it to State funding to establish its own school.

Mr Williams added that a growth of faith schools would lead Britain into greater social segregation and potential conflict.

He said: “The Reverend Blair and his flock not only support religious schools, they seem happy to see their number enlarged.”

But he said schooling and religion could not mix.

“Schools are to educate, churches are to indoctrinate. We believe in free State education for all without religious ties,” he said. Mr Williams also claimed that many parents pretended to be religious just to get their children into high-performing religious schools.

Delegates passed a motion warning that faith schools could encourage more “social fragmentation”.

Some 100 Muslim schools are awaiting approval to join the State sector. Mr Blair insists there can be no case for banning them given that Church of England, Catholic and Jewish State schools exist.

Mr Blair believes it is better to encourage them into the State sector, where they can be better monitored to ensure their teaching matches up with British values.

A Department for Education spokesman said: “We have no plans to cease to fund faith schools. The Government is committed to diversity in educational provision in the interests of raising standards and meeting parents’ preferences for the type of school they want for their children.

“Faith schools make an important contribution to community cohesion.”

FAITH SCHOOLS

14.04.07, 11:29am

Bliar is a disgusting traitor who should be impeached for killing his own country.
He was not elected to rule on faith schools.
Anyone who wants to live in this, OUR country must live by our rules of the land or get back from whence they came.
Faith schools from foreign lands breed hatred.
Have not we seen enough of it here already?
The sooner this Bliar and his kookie spouse go the better for us and the world.
Let him go to another country and demand what he so unauthorized readily gives away here.
Go to South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Iran. Syria and so on, he would soon lose contact with his head.
By the way I will pay their air fares, one way.

• Posted by: Robertz • Report Comment