Hotspots of Islamic extremism will be identified in schools, colleges and universities under government plans to be announced today.Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, will defy growing anger from Islamic leaders by ordering police and local authorities to root out Muslim extremists.
The announcement comes after the revelation yesterday that new faith schools could be forced to offer at least a quarter of their places to pupils of other religions and non-believers.
Ms Kelly will urge representatives from 20 “key” local councils to consider if they are doing enough to tackle extremism in schools, colleges and universities, and if they have identified “hot-spot” neighbourhoods and sections of the community that could be breeding grounds for such activity.
“In major parts of Britain the new extremism we’re facing is the single biggest security issue for local communities,” she will stay. “This is not just a problem for Muslim communities. The far Right is still with us, still poisonous, still trying to create and exploit divisions.”
The Department for Education has also prepared plans to ask university staff and lecturers to inform police of Muslim and “Asian-looking” students they suspect of involvement in supporting terrorists. An 18-page document due to be sent to universities and colleges by the end of the year expresses concern over Islamic societies and students from “segregated backgrounds”.
Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, is expected to suggest that opening up admissions to faith schools would help to ease racial tensions and give parents more choice. The move comes after a proposal this month by the Church of England to open up voluntarily 25 per cent of places in all its new schools to children irrespective of their religious beliefs.
The changes are likely to prove more controversial with Roman Catholics and Muslims. Critics of faith schools have long complained that they are exclusive and divide society, rather than promote cohesion. About a third, or 7,000, of all state schools in England have a religious ethos, mostly Christian. Four fifths of the top 200 secondaries are faith schools.
Mr Johnson will table an amendment to the Education and Inspections Bill when it returns to the Lords this week requiring new faith schools to reserve a quarter of their places for non-believers or children of other faiths. The change would place the initial decision about a schoolÂ’s intake in the hands of the local education authority (LEA), enabling it to demand that up to a quarter of its places are open to families of different or no faiths.
“It is not a quota, per se, only obviously if there is a demand for places,” a source close to Mr Johnson said. “But if there is demand they [LEAs] will have the power to insist on up to 25 per cent of places being given up to non-faith pupils.”
Where there is opposition to the policy within the school, the Church or community, an appeal could be made to the Secretary of State who could allow the LEA to approve a faith school with fewer than 25 per cent non-faith pupils.
Shahid Malik, the Muslim Labour MP for Dewsbury, said of the move: “This is part of a strategy which says we can’t ignore segregation any longer. We have to start working to make people have a greater understanding of one another.”
Last week Lord Bruce- Lockhart, the head of the Local Government Association, suggested in The Times that state schools should introduce ethnic quotas into admissions criteria to break down the extreme segregation of pupils along cultural and religious lines.
A Tory spokesman gave Mr Johnson’s plan a guarded welcome, saying that David Cameron had made clear that he supported such initiatives, but that it should not be a matter of uniform national rules. Idris Mears, of the Association of Muslim Schools, said that imposing the proposals on minority faiths seemed to be socially unjust. “Most Muslim schools already have this provision in their regulations, but to impose it on us without increasing our numbers substantially doesn’t seem fair,” he said.
There are seven Muslim state schools in England, and five more are recommended for public funding. Tony Blair hopes to bring more of the 150 private Muslim schools into the state sector. There are two Sikh schools, 37 Jewish schools, 2,041 Catholic schools and 4,646 Church of England schools.