ESTELLE MORRIS, the Education Secretary, said last week that all religious schools are to have programmes promoting inter-faith tolerance in order to prevent division in communities.
Addressing the Church of England's General Synod last week, Miss Morris sought to quell anxieties about faith schools prompted by the summer's race riots in Bradford.
She said guidance would be sent to all faith schools in England and Wales requiring them to integrate with the community by mixing with non-faith schools and schools of other beliefs.
"There is no contradiction in wanting a faith-based education and learning about tolerance," Miss Morris told the Synod at Church House, Westminster. "Schools have a vital role to play in helping to build local communities based on tolerance, respect and understanding."
She said it was "right and proper" that parents of other religions in addition to Christians be given the option of choosing a faith-based education for their children.
The minister welcomed Lord Dearing's report on Church of England schools, which recommends a more open admissions policy that would accept children of other faiths and none.
The Prime Minister encouraged an expansion of faith schools in the education White Paper in September.
She applauded the "distinctive Christian ethos" of Church of England schools, saying: "All schools have got to have something that marks them out, makes them different and special and faith schools do have that."
The Church of England runs 4,716 maintained schools, most of them primaries and all of them heavily subscribed. The Dearing report proposes opening another 100 secondary schools.
The Roman Catholic Church has 2,100 schools, the Methodists 27, the Jewish faith 32, the Muslims four, Sikhs two and there is one Seventh Day Adventist school and one Greek Orthodox.