Schools with predominantly Muslim pupils will have a duty to integrate them with children from other schools under Theresa May’s plans to reduce segregation in Britain’s largest cities.
In proposals expected to be brought forward shortly after the election, schools in predominantly Muslim areas could be twinned with those in other areas, with joint teaching, sporting events and activities made available.
The schools will also be expected to include the teaching of British laws, history and values in the core curriculum.
The plans call for a renewed focus on improving English literacy across all ages, an area that was identified by a recent report as a key driver of segregation, especially among women in Muslim communities.
The proposal on school integration was contained in a government paper that was due to have been published last month but was delayed because of the election. It was recommended by Dame Louise Casey in her report into improving community cohesion that was published last year.
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The Conservative manifesto commits the party to introducing a “new integration strategy” that will “seek to help people in more isolated communities to engage with the wider world”.
It says that it will work with schools that have “intakes from one predominant racial, cultural or religious background” to “get to know people with different ways of life”.
Mrs May implicitly repeated the pledge yesterday when she said that, to take on extremism, “we need to live our lives not in a series of separated, segregated communities, but as one truly United Kingdom”.
The plans are expected to be contained in a consultation paper that could be published before parliament rises for the summer recess.
As well as a response to radicalisation the move is being seen as an attempt to address the issues raised by the so-called Trojan horse scandal, which emerged in Birmingham more than two years ago. It revealed attempts by Muslim community leaders to enforce strict conservative Islamic values on a number of schools in the city.
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A report commissioned by the Department for Education found that while there had been no evidence of radicalisation in the schools concerned, there was evidence of a “co-ordinated, deliberate and sustained” attempt to introduce an “intolerant and aggressive Islamic ethos”.
The integration strategy is not without controversy. Many Muslim parents attributed the academic success of the Trojan horse schools to their emphasis on strict conservative values. “They didn’t want their children to become suicide bombers — they wanted them to become doctors and dentists,” one senior council figure said at the time. “They thought the schools were helping to achieve this.”
It is one of the many “difficult” conversations that Mrs May identified in her Downing Street speech yesterday.