Multi-faith schools

Sir Cyril Taylor, education adviser to the British government and chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust proposes in an interview in the Financial Times today that:

Schools dominated by Muslim children should be closed down and replaced with a new breed of "multi-faith" academies in order to forcibly integrate pupils in some of the UK's most troubled towns.

The BBC reports on this and adds, in the interests of balance of course, twice, just in case we did not get the message, that the Department of Education and Skills:

'has rejected such a controversial proposal.

"Any suggestions of closing schools are wide of the mark. However, all schools can and should play a leading role in creating greater community cohesion."'

Lord Adonis said that in such a school pupils would not be selected on the basis of their faith.  We need to hear more detail but I wonder how easy it is going to be to get parents to send their pupils to such a school - assuming that we are not talking about compulsory social engineering here.