NEWS STORY: Britain grants funding for Muslim schools

c. 1998 Religion News Service LONDON _ After years of campaigning by the nation’s 1.5 million-member Muslim community, the British government has agreed for the first time to provide state funding for Islamic schools. The decision, announced Friday (Jan. 9) by Education Secretary David Blunkett, was quickly welcomed by leaders of England’s Muslim organizations.”Such approval […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

LONDON _ After years of campaigning by the nation’s 1.5 million-member Muslim community, the British government has agreed for the first time to provide state funding for Islamic schools.

The decision, announced Friday (Jan. 9) by Education Secretary David Blunkett, was quickly welcomed by leaders of England’s Muslim organizations.”Such approval has been long overdue,”said Iqbal Sacranie, convenor of the United Kingdom’s Action Committee on Islamic Affairs.”It marks an important first step in … Labor’s promise to build and equal and inclusive society.” The two schools involved are the Islamia Primary School in north London and Al Furqan Primary School in Birmingham, England. Both have been given grant-maintained status, which means all of their operating costs will now be paid by the central government.


Muslims have been campaigning for inclusion in the government’s system of financing religious schools for more than 10 years. Two previous attempts, most recently in 1994, by the Islamia school to obtain what is called”voluntary aided status”_ where government aid is provided by the local education authority rather than the national government _ were unsuccessful. In addition, a Muslim secondary school for girls had its application for local aid turned down in 1995.

For years, Britain has funded schools run by the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish community. But the former, Conservative-controlled government refused to do the same for the country’s growing Muslim population.

The successive failures to have its schools incorporated into the state system led Muslims to charge they were being discriminated against.

Critics of funding the Muslim schools, however, said they feared the schools might not provide equal treatment of boys and girls.

Blunkett, in announcing the Labor government’s decision, said he believed the two schools would comply with Britain’s National Curriculum law, which spells out what children are taught and which requires equal treatment of boys and girls.”I am satisfied the new schools should provide a good standard of education,”Blunkett said in making the announcement.

Anglican Bishop John Barton of Birmingham also welcomed the announcement.”It is vitally important that no community should be the victim of unjust discrimination,”he said in a statement.

MJP END NOWELL

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