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Simon Rocker

Could the Chief be a champion of multi-faith schools?

March 13, 2009 14:20

This from a Guardian Comment is Free article by James Graham on faith schools:

"Three years ago, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was leading the charge against government plans to force faith schools to take up to 25% of pupils from other faiths or secular backgrounds. Mission accomplished, a year later he made a television programme extolling the virtues of faith schools which have a diverse intake. I suspect that people like Sacks know what the right thing to do is in terms of social cohesion but faced with a trenchant minority within their own communities allow themselves to be lead by the nose by those who shout the loudest."

The programme was the Chief Rabbi's Rosh Hashanah broadcast the year before last; it showed him visiting the King David Primary in Birmingham, which has a majority of non-Jewish pupils, many of them Muslim. I doubt that Sir Jonathan was actually trying to make a point that multi-faith schools are better than mono-faith schools, but there was certainly the odd mutter within the Jewish community that he might have featured a different school.

March 13, 2009 14:20

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