AT HOME: Students at the Guru Nanak Sikh Secondary School; practising yoga at the Swaminarayan School (below)

As the bell announces the close of school for the day, a sea of energetic children emerge from the building and race for the coveted back seats in the school bus. That's not an uncommon sight in Britain, except that if you look more closely you may note that all the children belong to a single community or faith.

At the Church of England School, to which all three of Tony and Cherie Blair's children go, the cherubic faces would be white. But if you visit an Asian faith school, you would find darker skinned children perhaps sporting a turban or a hijaab in the custom demanded by their faith.

It is a pointer to the "parallel lives" of the communities referred to by the Cantle Report following summer riots in Bradford and Oldham last year. Lives in which Asian and white people "do not seem to touch at any point ... let alone provide any meaningful interchange", the report said. In a report entitled Pride, Not Prejudice published after the riots, Lord Herman Ousely, former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), warned of "signs that communities are fragmenting along racial, cultural and faith lines. Segregation in schools is one indicator of this trend."

Society

Race to Reform Come may 31, governing bodies of schools will have to show a written policy statement for promoting racial equality linked to an action plan. They would also have to implement it and monitor its impact on pupils and their attainment, staff and parents of different racial groups. A good policy will: > set out the school's commitment to tackle racial discrimination and will promote equality of opportunity and good race relations and explain what this means for everyone connected with the school; > explain how the school will assess the policy's effectiveness with a time table for policy reviews; > define roles and responsibilities and explain what the school will do if the policy is not followed. To assess the impact of policies, schools will need information by racial group on needs, entitlements and outcomes for pupils, parents and staff. The CRE suggests that schools consider: > collecting and analysing relevant monitoring and other data; > talking to pupils, staff and parents to communicate better and involve them in planning and decision making; > conduct surveys/ special research. -Ishara Bhasi

The question that most people are asking now is should education and religion be mixed? While the Government is going ahead with a plan to expand the number of faith schools in Britain, schoolteachers, unions and intellectuals are strongly protesting.

Members of the National Association of Schoolmasters and of the Union of Women Teachers say that what Britain needs at the moment is a universally secular school system. Many of them voted to halt the creation of new faith schools and encourage existing schools to become secular by breaking their religious links as more single faith schools would encourage "more social fragmentation".

Mono-faith schools, on the other hand, see no reason why the government should not fund faith schools.

Expressing grave reservations about the government's policy of encouraging more faith schools, Peter Smith, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), said "We do not think that public money should be used to fund cranks under the guise of freedom of speech." He accepted that the right to state-funded faith schools should not only be confined to Christians but he had "grave reservations" about how the policy was being implemented.

"It will be acutely difficult to distinguish between mainstream religions and cults or fundamentalist sects, many of which are backed by substantial private funds," points out communications director Sherry Jesperson of ATL. Faith schools, she feels, should be open to children of all religions.

Gurbux Singh, the current chairman of the CRE, too cautions against "large-scale separation and segregation" fearing that single faith schools could be "damaging multi-culturalism".

Faith schools, however, seem to have an up-side as well. So even as all the students and the teachers practise the same religion, it is also true that students of these schools perform better than those at comprehensive schools. Especially in the Asian schools.

For example, 100 per cent of the students of Swaminarayan School scored five or more A*-C while 96 per cent of students from Islamia Girls High School scored five or more A*s -C in their GCSEs against 49 per cent in the average of schools across England.

At present, of 25,000 state-maintained schools, there are only 6,384 faith schools in the primary sector and 589 in the secondary sector. All but 40 faith schools are native Christian denominations. Of the 40, 32 are Jewish, four Muslim, two Sikh, one Greek Orthodox and one listed as "other."

The Swaminarayan Independent School is the first Hindu faith school in Europe. Mahendra Savjani, the school's head teacher, finds the scrutiny of Asian schools inexplicable. "It is a faith school, no different in ideology say from a Catholic school, a Church of England school, or a Jewish school. People have a right to choose the kind of education they want. Parents simply want a Hindu ethos at the school."

Savjani stresses that it is a single race establishment, but "we're inclusive," he says. "We will take anyone in this establishment. It's interesting how Indian parents are happy to send their children to Catholic or C of E schools, but the reverse is not true."

Conscious of the allegation that it is cocooning its children, the school goes out of the way to make sure the children meet with people of different cultures. "We celebrate Easter, Hanukkah, Chinese New Year ... we celebrate Christmas in a bigger way than any of the local state schools because we are a British school."

ATL's Jespersen feels it is unreasonable to not allow other communities to have faith school when Church of England and Jewish schools have been functioning for so long. "But having decided to be in favour, the Government will have to go through the implications of having a faith school. We ask who is legitimate faith and what is cult? Who is to say that moonies or scientologists can't open their faith schools? They have a great deal of money for lobbying but are these valid religions like say Greek orthodox?"

Teachers also fear that faith schools if not monitored could turn into "Osama bin Laden academies".

"We are not teaching students how to hijack planes here," jests Abdullah Trevathan, headmaster of Islamia Girls High School. But he is worried about how Muslim schools have come under the spotlight after the 9/11 attacks.

"Faith schools have been in this country for centuries, it's only now that everyone has become so against them. There would have no voices raised had there not been any Muslim schools," he says.

The Islamia School was established in 1981 by pop star Cat Stevens in response to concerns that the state education system wasn't representing the needs and culture of Muslim children and their parents, who as taxpayers had a right to have their faith represented.

"The argument was further fortified by the fact that there were Anglican, Catholic and Jewish schools or non-Christian schools," says Trevathan.

A charge levelled against faith schools is that many such state funded ones interpret the national curriculum as they see it fit. "The Government maintains that faith schools follow national curriculum but the creationists are teaching the bible-based view of the Earth's origins. The Muslim schools have a Quranic interpretation on everything including on origin of life." says a spokesperson of ATL. The recent debate over the creationist school in Gateshead, she adds, shows that the Government is not willing to face these difficult issues head on.

The motion also declared that it was "an inappropriate use of taxpayers' money to fund schools with exclusive and discriminatory philosophies, whatever the system of belief to which they subscribe," says Jesperson .

Experience has shown that an unsupervised cocktail of religion and education could be explosive. Witness the madrasas across Pakistan and Afghanistan which created the Taliban, and the faith schools in Northern Ireland that fuelled regional conflicts.

The ATL maintains that faith schools also should conform to the cultural norms of the society in which they exist, and has demanded that the Government withdraw funds from schools that refuse to employ staff from other faiths. "We will only give our support to faith schools if they teach the national curriculum to both girls and boys; justify the reasons for which they will teach religious education outside the framework of the agreed syllabus; employ qualified, registered teachers and be prepared to admit children from other faith groups," the association said.

The Guru Nanak Sikh Secondary V.A. School in Hayes was Britain's first state-funded Sikh school established in 1992 following a two-year campaign by its congregation, some of whom even re-mortgaged their homes to raise funds. The walls of the school foyer are emblazoned with quotes from religious texts of every faith. As Head-teacher Rajinder Singh Sandhu explains, this is reflective of the all-embracing nature of the Sikh culture upon which the school is founded. "Sikhism teaches respect for all faiths," he says.

The school is unique in that it boasts an intake of students who are not of the Sikh faith, but are fully respectful of its tenets. One such is Surith Prera. A sixth former who left the London Oratory, a Catholic faith school, enrolled instead at the Guru Nanak School.

"I got bullied at my old school and I felt the teachers didn't really do anything. I really, really didn't want to come to this school at first. I knew nothing about Sikhism. I was persuaded to come here for a day and got to know the people and I thought, wow, these people are great, so I stayed. I'm Catholic, but it really doesn't make any difference. I take part in everything, and even though it may be a language I don't understand, I still contribute to the community here."

Security is important and so are results. For a young Muslim couple seeking to place their daughter at the Islamia School, the appeal is clear. "The school has a good reputation for high academic achievement. There are certain morals and manners instilled and that's important. Because of the culture here, we know they won't fall into bad company. It's just easier."

And perhaps safer. But as the debate rages on in the UK, the two sides seem to be equally drawn on their arguments.