SINGLE-FAITH schools can add to the separation of communities, a Home Office report into the summer violence in northern towns like Burnley said this week.

"A significant problem is posed by existing and future mono-cultural schools," the report by the Community Cohesion Review Team, chaired by the former chief executive of Nottingham City Council Ted Cantle, added.

It said the emphasis in faith schools should be changed so that all schools promoted and fostered an understanding of other cultures.

And the report called for both independent and state sector faith schools to open up a minimum 25 per cent of places to other or non-faith students.

Many schools still ran a euro-centric curriculum and offered pervasive Christian worship.

"British history in particular should be taught in a way in which young people from ethnic minority backgrounds feel a sense of belonging and ownership," the Cantle report said.

Meanwhile, the Burnley Task Force report published this week, chaired by Lord Tony Clarke, found that many people thought there was not enough integration in schools.

"Sibling admissions, quotas and bussing of pupils were issues that engendered strong feelings," it added.

Lord Clarke's team called for more opportunities to be sought for white and ethnic minority communities to mix.

And local authorities should look at ways of encouraging and supporting multi-cultural activities which cut across racial divisions.

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said making a faith school take in some students from other religious groups would not eradicate the dangers of intolerance.

"There is no justification for discrimination in a publicly-funded body," he added.

"If we carry on blindly with more and more faith schools, within a generation our education system will be irrevocably splintered along religious, and therefore, racial lines," he said.

Meanwhile, a poll carried out by the Observer newspaper last month found that 80 per cent of people questioned did not support the extension of single-faith schools, including Islam and Judaism.

Nearly 6,000 people were surveyed.

They provided more opposition to single-faith schools than that faced by either the poll tax or the privatisation of British Rail.

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