`Teach the Koran in our schools’, Daily Star

We say .

Daily Star readers who got no further than the headline could have got the impression that some kind of drive was afoot to make schools teach the Koran. This impression would have been bolstered by the picture accompanying the article, showing Islam’s main religious text alongside the caption: “Must read: NUT wants the Koran studied”.

But the National Union of Teachers made no such demand at its conference this week. In Good Faith, its report on faith schools, did not even mention the Koran.

Instead it recommends that all schools should be non-faith comprehensives which make “reasonable accommodation to meet the needs of pupils of religious belief”. Steve Sinnott, the NUT general secretary, said this could involve clerics from all faiths, including Islam, visiting schools.

Would it have been shocking if the union had actually suggested some pupils did study the Koran? Probably not, given that many pupils already read extracts from it while undertaking the Islam unit of religious studies GCSE.