Supporter comments

Our society is becoming increasingly non-religious. Given many schools are 'oversubscribed’, many parents are not able to rely on a local school being able to take their children. Selecting which children can attend based on religion wouldn't be allowed in a workplace, why allow it in a school?

I went to a mixed comprehensive school, and I believe it promoted inclusivity. Religious segregation in schools is not the way forward!

Don't facilitate religious power and indoctrination of children towards religion during their formative years.

Your family practicing a different faith should not determine your child’s access education. This segregation based on faith is incredibly unhealthy, not just for children, but also for society in general.

Segregation, sectarianism, division lead to myopia, intolerance, extremist groups and destabilise society, communities, services. Equal under the law should be available to all UK citizens. there shouldn't be any exemptions. Equality for Everyone!

Our society is increasingly non-religious but those who practice a religion are becoming more and more polarised. Educating children separately, based on their parents' beliefs, only encourages this. And the majority in our society, the non-believers, are offered a restricted choice of schools, thus discriminating against them.

We are trying to raise our child to understand that the freedom to follow a religion, or to follow no religion, is a fundamental tenet of life in the UK. It is the mixing of beliefs and no beliefs that leads to an integrated and tolerant society. There is no better place for this than school. Our children will be deprived of exposure to people from a range of backgrounds and who hold a range of beliefs - this will not lead to integration but quite the opposite.

In South-West Scotland, where I was educated, faith education (RC especially) is practically universal. There is repeated, heated opposition by clerics and primates to any form of amalgamation of faith and non-faith schools, so that practically none such exists. The outcome of this is religious bigotry and sectarian enmity, well into adult life in many cases, often life-long. It becomes obvious to some children in faith schools that what they hear as truth cannot possibly be so. I was lucky enough to be one such child. Religious doctrine was nonetheless hammered into us, sometimes with force (physical and psychological, with threats of hellfire if we failed to perform some meaningless ritual). This is especially harmful with someone of 'unorthodox' sexuality, like me. Threats continue well into puberty. We are taught to hate our very being. Consequences of these practices include my atheism of many years (as with both parents) and, in my case, epilepsy, deriving from fear of what I knew of myself. To be gay was represented as unforgiveable. This is poison to the personality, not education in any real sense. There must be no proliferation of faith schools, caused by the lifting of the 50% cap. Better still: remove faith from schools altogether. It stifles rather than encourage thought. Discrimination is actually permissible, since Blair, against 'practising' gay members of school staff. This is a clear violation of a right to a personal life, as assured by the HRA. What of freedom of thought?