The Government was warned this week that plans to increase the number of faith-based schools will damage race relations and create dangerous divisions.

Teachers’ leaders joined Labour activitists and backbench MPs at the Labour party conference to urge ministers to rethink the policy which has become even more controversial in the wake of terrorist attacks in America and riots in Bradford and Oldham.

Ibrahim Hewitt, spokes-man for the Association of Muslim Schools, said: “If this is a reaction to what happened to the World Trade Center, then the link is outrageous.”

The Prime Minister’s school-age children all attend church schools. And today the head of the Anglican board of education told ministers to stick by the plan which will result in an increase in state-funded Muslim and other faith schools.

The National Association of Head Teachers set out its objections at a fringe meeting at the Brighton conference. David Hart, NAHT general secretary, said: “If you really want to bring together the different ethnic minorities, religions and races, you have to bring them together within schools.”

Barry Sheerman, Labour chair of the Commons all-party Education Select Committee, said creating more single-faith schools risked “setting ourselves up for the types of problems that we have seen so tragically unfold in Northern Ireland”.

He added: “The Government should be very careful about setting up a whole system of schools where children from a Muslim background attend very different schools and where their educational experience is different from that of many of their peers.”

But Trevor Phillips, the leading black broadcaster and deputy chair of the Greater London Assembly, said: “As long as Catholics, Anglicans and Jews have the right to create voluntary-aided schools, it would be a crime to say Muslims cannot.”

Canon John Hall, general secretary of the Church of England Board of Education says in an article in today’s Church Times: “If the Government were now to turn back, the message to those of other faiths would be all too clear; you are not fully part of British life. Is it possible to think of any message to the British Muslim community more likely to put moderation and harmony at risk?” Schools minister Stephen Timms conceded the expansion of faith schools was a contentious issue, but said: “The evidence is very clear that faith schools are doing very good jobs, and are doing them in particular in disadvantaged communities.”

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