PAUL WILENIUS:                The morning school run starts 
a new day for this all Muslim school in Birmingham. But it could also herald 
a new age for single faith schools in this country. Tony Blair believes 
schools like this are good for children, indeed some of his own family 
attend Catholic schools in London. Tony Blair is pushing through a policy 
to create more faith schools, just  like this one. But there are growing 
concerns this may produce more racial segregation, rather than integration. 
And as a result his government is coming under pressure to change these 
policies, as there are fears it could create more racial tension.

DR ASHOK KUMAR MP:            My fear is that we could have 
situations of communities where we have a Muslim community having a Muslim 
school, a Hindu community holding Hindu school and a Sikh community holding 
a Sikh school and of course less integration between them. 

PHIL WOOLAS MP:                We do need the children 
to learn together, to live together and to understand each other, and it's 
only in that way that we will get integration.

MATTHEW TAYLOR:            My message to ministers is if faith 
based school policy is used wrongly it is going to further divide our communities 
and there will be more riots this year, next year and the year after. 

WILENIUS:                    Registration at the Al-Hijrah 
School. It's one of the new faith schools allowed by the government. But 
the Education Bill going through Parliament now, could clear the way for 
many more. Many minority religious groups are expected to ask for state 
funding for more schools. They want the same rights given to Catholics 
and Anglicans,  making it a level playing field.

                        Most schools in this country 
are secular. Overall there's twenty-five thousand state schools in the 
country. Of those there's seven-thousand which are religious in character. 
The number not of major Christian denominations are forty with thirty-two 
Jewish schools, while the number of Muslim Schools is only four, with another 
two schools run by Sikhs.
 
AKHMED HUSSAIN:            It provides an environment where 
they can learn with confidence, learn about their faith, learn about their 
culture, learn about all the other things that they need to become good 
citizens within this society. And I think they can do that with confidence 
in this environment where they can pray without any restriction whatsoever.

UNNAMED MAN:                My main reasons actually for 
sending my children here is, there's three areas which I'm sort of concerned 
about, and that is the spiritual development of my children, moral development 
as well as educational development, so it's a whole package.

UNNAMED WOMAN:            I practise my religion at home and 
I like for them to carry on their practices in this school, plus I believe 
the teachers here are very well educated themselves. 

WILENIUS:                    Parents feel pupils like 
these get a better overall education in faith schools. And this school 
prides itself on its good grades. But the Think Tank Civitas said last 
week that, in general, standards in these schools are no better. 

MIKE O'BRIEN MP:                We live in a multi-cultural 
society and that  means that we should respect people's right to be different 
including on issues of religion. It's not about separateness, it's about 
respect for the right of people to be different, and the benefit we all 
get from having a multi-cultural society which is diverse, which does respect 
different religions, and people's right to have their own set of values 
within the context of a multi- cultural Britain. So those people who argue 
that faith schools is about division, are wrong. 
 
KUMAR:                    I went through state education. 
I enjoyed it, it was a great enlightening experience, and I think it did 
me no harm.  I see myself multi-culturalist and part and parcel of this 
society, but I fear that the success we have made of our multi-culturalism 
multi-faith society, I think the dangers signs are there, that if we go 
push too far, too fast down this road there are danger signs in this.  


WILENIUS:                    Since the summer riots 
and September the eleventh, Ministers and Labour MPs are more worried about 
the faith schools policy. Already Education Secretary Estelle Morris is 
backtracking. She's putting more emphasis on getting faith schools to be 
more inclusive, by bringing children of different backgrounds together. 
But there are real doubts whether such a policy work can actually work.

MATTHEW TAYLOR:            I certainly think there's a greater 
nervousness in government about the faith school policy, since the events 
of September the eleventh, and the ramifications of those events in terms 
of what it's told us about different attitudes within Britain, but I think 
more particularly the riots in northern towns and cities and the alarm 
bells that has rung about segregation in those places. So I think the government 
is thinking about the policy again.

WILENIUS:                    Although faith schools 
place a great deal of emphasis on religion many, like this one, do make 
a lot of effort to maintain strong links with other sections of their community. 
The government now wants to make sure that all religious schools co-operate 
more with other schools and bodies in their area. There's a belief this 
sort of partnership between schools could help bring people together.

TAYLOR:                    They've got to say to faith 
based schools, you are part of the education community.  You are not an 
island in yourself. And there are lots of ways in which you can do that. 
It's about bringing children in to the school from other schools, children 
from the faith based school going out, it's about shared activities, drama, 
sports, those sorts of things that bring kids together. 

AKHMED HUSSAIN:            We have very strong link with the 
community of the school, with the religious institutions which are around 
the school and with the non- religious, non Muslim institutions, and other 
schools and colleges around the area. It think this is very important in 
ensuring that we do not remain separate.

WILENIUS:                    But merely moving towards 
greater co-operation is not enough for many MPs and experts. They feel 
faith schools should let in more children from other religions. Ministers 
are known to be thinking about encouraging religious schools to adopt a 
more open admissions policy when they issue new guidelines next year. This 
is exactly what some race experts feel is needed.

BARONESS UDDIN:                Many church schools, apart 
from certain schools in some of the areas that we visited have, you know, 
where unacceptably they have hundred per cent, you know, Asian children, 
Muslim children or hundred per cent Christian white children, I think that 
is, in this country, must be unacceptable, especially in those type of 
areas.  What has to happen is that new schools, new faith schools that 
are given licence also have to say that you know, to your neighbours, you 
should be able to accept other, other children, I think that, that's my, 
again in my own personal opinion, that must be the way forward that all 
schools must be asked to look at their entry criteria to ensure that they're 
not excluding those across their gate. 

WILENIUS:                    This school says they 
will be prepared to consider letting in pupils from other faiths. But the 
government's problem is that many existing religious schools across the 
country will be unwilling to open up their own schools if it means losing 
control of admissions policy. 

REV VINCENT NICHOLS:            I think it's far more important 
that schools are enabled from their strengths to work together than a mix 
is placed into a school, which then becomes education to the lowest common 
denominator. I think it's far more, a far more helpful way forward to encourage 
schools into partnerships than to force them into take mixes of children 
who then as it were don't know who they are, then just have to be part 
of a fruit salad.

WILENIUS:                    The desire to protect 
culture and religion lies behind the move towards more faith schools. And 
critics say by their very nature they tend to exclude outsiders. Even if 
the government tried to encourage schools to take more pupils from other 
faiths, it's feared few would take the places. This school has yet to have 
an application from a non-Muslim.
 
KUMAR:                    I see dangers ahead that 
unless we ensure that Hindu youngsters be able to go to Muslim schools 
and the other way round, I think what we'll get is pockets of division 
in the community and I see very serious dangers because that will stop 
in itself integration which we have been trying to work together and of 
course, I'd love to see, if it's possible, Catholic youngsters going to 
Muslim schools.  Again, I struggle with that concept, I just can't see 
that happening.  I like to see some evidence of that. I haven't seen any 
so far.

WILENIUS:                    So the path to a large 
scale growth of the religious schools sector will not be as smooth as it 
once looked. Indeed many Labour MPs are divided over the issue, and there 
are calls to abandon the expansion policy altogether.

TONY WRIGHT MP:                If you were starting again, 
would you start with religious schools anyway? And I think the answer is, 
no, you wouldn't. Then you've got the question - what do you do with those 
you've already got? To which my answer is, well you should try to open 
them up more. That's not the same as saying let's have more of them.

O'BRIEN:                    It doesn't worry me that 
ninety-nine per cent of children in a particular school are of a, are of 
one faith, providing that school is teaching the national curriculum, the 
basic rights of British citizenship, teaching people how to be good British 
citizens and of course part of the idea of being included in a multi-racial 
multi-cultural society is that we have to respect people's right to be 
different.

WILENIUS:                    The computer room is 
a shining example of expansion in this Muslim school. Yet even the Christian 
Socialist Movement - which has Tony Blair as a member - is having doubts 
about increasing the number of faith schools. Some senior Labour figures 
are warning that if the government gets this policy wrong, it could have 
serious consequences.  

WOOLAS:                    Well we have Anglican and 
Catholic schools in Oldham and fairness would say that, why aren't there 
Muslim schools?  The horrible reality is that if we were to say we are 
going to have a Muslim school now in Oldham, exclusively Muslim school, 
it would cause a huge division and resentment and, and problems.  

TAYLOR:                    What we might see is these 
schools contributing to a process that I've called consenting apartheid, 
which is where communities agree to separate with catastrophic consequences 
I think, for the people who live in those places and for the places themselves. 
And we saw the consequences of that consenting apartheid process in Oldham 
and Bradford and the places we saw riots over the summer.  The government 
could never forgive itself and should never be forgiven if the faith based 
school policy drives that process further forward.
 
WILENIUS:                    It's the evening school 
run. Parents line up to take their children home, after a day learning 
and praying. But the frenzy of activity in the school yard mirrors the 
passions stirred up by the debate over religious schools. Tony Blair is 
learning himself, that although faith schools are popular with parents, 
he might find it a lot harder than he thought to take everyone with him.