Fury over plan to let imams teach the Koran in state schools

State schools must allow children to practise their faith by inviting in preachers such as imams and introducing prayer rooms and religious holidays, the country's biggest teaching union said yesterday.

They should make arrangements for pupils to be given "instruction" in their own religion during the normal school day and rights to pray and worship instead of attending regular assemblies, the National Union of Teachers said.

Schools should also allow different uniform rules, serve meals that meet religious requirements such as halal and kosher, plan holidays around festivals and special days and provide private prayer rooms.

The call comes as new research today shows the numbers attending mosques in England and Wales will outstrip Roman Catholic churchgoers by 2020.

Christian Research expects Catholic worshippers at Sunday Mass to fall to 679,000 but Muslims at Friday prayer to increase to 683,000. The figures also suggest the number of Muslims at mosques will overtake Church of England members at Sunday services.

Under today's radical plan from teachers' leaders, designed to overhaul faith-based education, the NUT called on ministers to abandon the historic daily act of Christian worship in favour of "inclusive" school assemblies.

Existing faith schools should be stripped of rights to select pupils on the basis of the religion they practise to prevent them "discriminating" against others and fuelling community tensions, the document said.

The blueprint, from the most left-wing of the three main teaching unions, is aimed at undermining faith schools by encouraging religious parents to consider non-faith community schools instead.

NUT leaders argued that requiring schools to cater for all religions would limit demand for faith schools and bring children of different backgrounds together.

However the proposal, effectively creating a rival system to faith schools, sparked a furore last night over the extent to which schools should be required to accommodate different religious beliefs.

The Church of England, head teachers' leaders and campaigners for a secular education system condemned the plan.

The Muslim Council of Britain welcomed calls for imams to provide religious instruction in schools and moves to accommodate Islamic beliefs but said many parents would still prefer a faith school.

Tory MP Douglas Carswell, a member of the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee, said the plan amounted to "social engineering" and accused the NUT of attempting to impose an "aggressive multi-cultural agenda".

Launching the paper, NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said the dominance of England's Christian schools was "unjust and unsustainable" amid growing demands from Muslim families who want their own religious state schools.

There was now "every argument for the curriculum and staffing to respond positively both to the diversity of faiths within schools".

The plan meant "more than simply religious education" but "religious instruction", Mr Sinnott said.

"I believe that there will be real benefits to all our communities and youngsters if we could find space within schools for pupils who are Roman Catholics, Anglican, Methodist, Jewish, Sikh and Muslim to have space for more religious instruction in schools," he said.

"You could have imams coming in, you could have the local rabbi coming in and the local Roman Catholic priest.

"If there were opportunities where they all talked together to the youngsters, what a fantastic example that would be."

The policy paper went on to call for "reasonable accommodations" including "provision of adequate private prayer space within schools" and "recognising religious holidays which embrace all faiths".

It added: "Inclusive school assemblies must replace 'collective worship' with separate optional prayers and worship for those that require them."

Schools are still required by law to stage a daily act of worship of a mainly Christian character, although it is not widely enforced.

But a spokesman for the Church of England said: "Religious instruction belongs with the religious institutions, the churches, the mosques, the temples.

"It is for religions to teach their faith to people; it is for schools to teach about religion."

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "This plan could compound the problem if the people coming into schools were offering extreme views.

"How would you have any control over what was being taught in your school?"

The NUT document was formally adopted by delegates at the union's annual conference in Manchester yesterday but there was ignorance among some as to its content.

A scheduled debate on faith schools, on a motion calling for an entirely secular education system, will no longer take place due to time constraints.

Mr Carswell said it ran against the grain of attempts to tackle segregation by promoting common values.

"This is social engineering. Ideologues in the NUT whose ideas belong to the 1960s and 1970s want to impose an aggressively multi-cultural agenda.

"In case the NUT hasn't heard, multi-culturalism is generally regarded as a failure and even central government is abandoning it."

About 7,000 state schools in England are faith schools - roughly one in three of the total - educating 1.7 million pupils.

The large majority are either Church of England or Roman Catholic schools which have control over their own admissions arrangements.

A spokesman for the Department for Children said: "There is no policy to increase the number of faith schools – it is up to local communities to decide the kind of schools they want."