Race-based riots at home and recent horrors abroad seem to have made the public more hostile to the idea of state-funded religious schools.

The message of the TESMORI faith schools survey is that, while most adults are happy or indifferent about existing religious schools, a significant minority oppose plans to expand their number and include more Muslim, Sikh, Greek Orthodox and other faith schools. Nearly twice as many oppose expansion as support it (see box, right, and charts, opposite).

Many in Tony Blair’s own party are sceptical too. “Before September 11, it looked like a bad idea; it now looks like a mad idea,” Tony Wright, Labour MP for Cannock Chase and chairman of the Commons public administration committee, said at last week’s education Question Time.

The poll of nearly 2,000 adults throughout Britain in November sends a clear message to the Government about the extent of public concern over extremism. Four out of five of the adults polled felt that state-funded religious schools must be open to pupils of other faiths and none. Only one in five felt such schools should be allowed to admit only pupils of one faith.

This is a much sterner test of inclusiveness than ministers are proposing. To allay public concern, they say new religious schools will be approved by their local schools organisation committee only if they agree to admit pupils from other faiths or show that they will work in partnership with nearby schools. These requirements will be set out in new guidance next year.

But even these will mean applying stricter criteria to new faith schools than to the 6,973 that already exist. The majority (57%) are aided schools, where admission is up to the governors. They are not obliged to admit pupils of other faiths although many do, especially Anglican schools.

The House of Lords ruled in 1992 that an oversubscribed Catholic girls’ aided school in London was not compelled to admit a Hindu and a Muslim as they did not meet the school’s criteria.

Unless they are specialist or beacon schools, faith schools are not required to work in partnership with other schools.

In the Commons last week, Education Secretary Estelle Morris praised the Church of England - which plans to open 100 more secondaries - for the “entirely inclusive attitude” in its schools.

But when Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat education spokesman, asked for a guarantee that faith schools would be prevented from discriminating against children of other faiths, or none, in admissions, she said it was “reasonable” to give preference to one faith if the school was over-subscribed.

Her view is that it is unfair to deny faith schools to minority religions when such schools have long been available to Christians and Jews.

She also pointed out to MPs recently that Muslims in Birmingham, for instance, have already set up their own private schools. It would be easier to ensure high standards, equal opportunities and breadth of curriculum if those schools were in the state sector.

Answering Mr Wright in the Commons last week, she said: “Don’t land the whole of the issue of segregated communities on the head of faith schools because that’s not what creates it.”