UK Schools to Have Koran Classes

State schools in England want to allow imams, priests and rabbis to come into schools and offer religious instruction. In the eyes of the National Union of Teachers this should increase cohesion among different communities and reduce the demand for private schools. BBC

I don't know how this is suppose to increase community cohesion and the article doesn't explain. Plenty of muslims have been sharing islam with england for past couple of year and a lot of people don't like it. So how is an imam going to school, and telling children that Jews are the offspring of apes and pigs and that islam should dominate the world, going to help with community cohesion?

Head teachers should allow imams, rabbis and priests to offer religious instruction to pupils in all state schools, teachers' leaders have said.

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) said the move would be a way to reunite divided communities.

The NUT said parents had a right to have specific schooling in their own faith, if that was what they wanted.

But having children taught at different faith-based schools had led to community breakdown in some areas.

I wonder which faith based schools have led to community breakdown. My money is on Catholic schools....

It could be devised in response to parental demand and would be provided over and above the religious education already included in the curriculum.

Speaking to reporters at the union’s annual conference in Manchester, Mr Sinnott said the post-1960s immigration from Southern Asia meant many more Muslim and Hindu youngsters were growing up in Britain.

He said: "This had led some people to reflect whether the development of faith schools was something which should be supported in a national context."

The real concern is that youngsters from different backgrounds needed to be educated together, he added.

[...]

But it also comes as delegates prepare to debate calls for faith schools to be abolished.

Mr Sinnott said abolition was not the NUT’s policy, but he did want to see fewer faith schools opening.

He stressed that no pupils would be forced to have any religious instruction.