Education Secretary Alan Johnson has made a u-turn on forcing faith schools to take in pupils from other religions or non-religious backgrounds. DR RAMINDAR SINGH, author of The Struggle for Racial Justice: from Community Relations to Community Cohesion: The story of Bradford 1950-2002, suggests that faith schools are not the way to encourage integration in communities.

Mixing politics with religion generally proves dangerous however noble the cause may be for doing so.

Alan Johnson didn't have to wait too long to realise that introducing a quota of 25 per cent non-faith children in all new faith schools to be approved in order to promote community cohesion was to be reacted to with full vigour.

He has obviously backed down from bringing in legislation to do so under intense pressure from faith leaders of all denominations.

Leaders of some Hindu, Sikh, Muslim Jewish and Roman Catholic organisations wrote jointly in The Times strongly objecting to the introduction of quotas in admissions to faith schools. They argued that it was likely to "undermine relationships between minority groups and the state".

Leaders of Jewish and Roman Catholic faiths saw the proposal discriminatory and likely to prevent some Jewish and Catholic children from attending their faith schools, which were already small in numbers compared with Church of England schools.

I believe the Government's overall policy of promoting more grant-aided faith schools is seriously questionable. Moreover, the proposal of fixing a quota of non-faith children in faith schools was full of holes and was likely to prove unachievable for a variety of complex practical reasons. Using the voluntary commitment of Catholic schools to take measures for promoting integration and community cohesion is no more than a retreat with honour.

The proposal was counter to the prime aim of a religious group in setting up its separate schools. A particular faith school is expected to promote the beliefs, practices and norms of life of that faith. It is intended to provide children attending the school an opportunity to soak a special faith ethos to model their lives on that experience.

Thus creating inclusiveness in faith schools through whatever measures is about to remain unattainable and generally unacceptable.

In my experience Sikh and Muslim community leaders supporting the idea of having their own faith schools might express their willingness to admit children of other faiths as long as they were committed to show respect to the special religious ethos of their schools.

Without saying it openly, in reality it would boil down to seeking some degree of allegiance of non-faith children to the particular faith of the school rather than a genuine desire for exposing Sikh and Muslim children to the beliefs and values of other faiths through multi-faith discourse and social interaction.

In relation to minority groups' whether in employment or in education, the setting of "quotas" is always seen to be discriminatory and a way of providing advantage to minority groups over others, and thus to be resisted.

A more realistic approach for the faith schools could be to voluntarily set targets' for non-faith children in their admission policy in proportion to the population of other faiths in the catchment area of the school.

Most employers do so in their recruitment of workers to meet their general duty' under the Race Relations Act. To assess an individual faith school's commitment and achievement in promoting integration and community cohesion such targets could prove a useful measure for the Ofsted inspectors.

The role of faith schools in contemporary Britain has been widely debated many times before and the subject is likely to remain on the political agenda as long as we have the existing large number of Church of England and Roman Catholic schools. And any proposals from minority religious communities to set up their own schools, privately funded or seeking grant-aided status, if turned down, will be unjustified as long as they meet the required criteria.

At present, the subject has gained prominence, in the context of urgent public concerns about the alleged failure of state-sponsored policies of multiculturalism in integrating most British-born Muslim young people into mainstream social and civic institutions of British society.

The Swan Committee on education in the 1980s fully deliberated on the role of faith schools in developing harmonious race relations, in the contemporary jargon called community cohesion and integration.

It concluded: "Although ethnic minority religious groups had the legal right to establish their own schools, this would not be a desirable development."

This would not be in the "long-term interest of the ethnic minority communities, nor would they necessarily tackle many of the underlying concerns of the communities involved, and indeed might exacerbate racial hostility", the committee said. Even the Commission for Racial Equality was supportive of the committee's position.

Keeping in view the Swan Committee's conclusion, which I believe is still largely relevant, and the introduction of National Curriculum and Citizenship Education in all schools, the stress needs to be in improving the educational standards in state secular schools.

It is state schools that most of the children of minority ethnic communities attend. Some of the issues, for instance underachievement in education, high unemployment among youth, social deprivation, poverty etc underlying the current state of weak, unstable and shallow community cohesion in cities like Bradford, can only be addressed through effective good citizenship education for all, in all schools.

In the contemporary multi-faith and culturally diverse British society, the citizenship education curriculum should included some basic knowledge and understanding of fundamental beliefs, common practices and key festivals of all main faiths.

Significant reasons for parents' choice of faith schools for their children are generally their good discipline and higher standards of achievement.

If state schools were able to meet such parental expectations their attraction for faith schools would diminish. Furthermore, the debate whether these schools promote integration and tolerance or sharpens social and cultural differences and religious divisions, will become less fierce.

Ideally, as suggested in the T&A's editorial comment (October 17), "until faith is taken out of the school environment completely and all schools become secular", the desired integration and community cohesion in contemporary British society is unlikely to be achieved.