Teachers call for faith schools to be abolished in the interest of community relations

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Faith schools undermine community relations and should be abolished, according to teachers.

Britain's biggest classroom union - the National Union of Teachers - will debate calls for all faith schools to be brought within a secular state education system.

Religious groups should have no role running state-funded schools, according to a motion to be debated at the NUT's annual conference in Manchester today.

"The long term aim of the union should be the establishment of a single, secular comprehensive state education system," says the motion, proposed by the NUT's Leicester branch.

"Whilst religious studies and philosophy should be an integral part of the entitlement curriculum for all pupils, religious groups, of whatever faith, should have no place in the control and management of schools."

The motion says that all pupils should have the chance to meet children from "a variety of backgrounds and faiths" within their daily schooling.

"Education segregated on the basis of faith, ethnicity or social class undermines community cohesion," it says.

The motion calls on the union's executive to draw up proposals for the "integration" of all faith schools, "together with any other religiously controlled or sponsored state schools, into a publicly funded, secular system".

The call follows warnings from ministers that faith schools - which are highly popular with middle-class parents - are breaking admissions laws.

Earlier this month, Schools Secretary Ed Balls controversially claimed that a "significant minority" of schools - mainly faith schools - were failing to adhere to the Government's school admissions code.

Some were even charging parents for places in what should be a free state education system, he said.

Last year, Mr Balls pledged to support the principle of faith schools and raised the prospect of dozens of Muslim schools joining the state sector.

But he later insisted he had no policy of expanding faith-based education, a comment which many saw as a departure from Government policy under Tony Blair.

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.