Days after the head of Britain's education watchdog criticized Muslim schools for failing to promote tolerance, a report from his own agency said evangelical Christian schools have a worse record.
Inspectors from the Office for Standards in Education rated 42.5 percent of private evangelical Christian schools as failing to help pupils learn to respect other cultures and promote "tolerance and harmony," compared to 36 percent of Muslim schools, the Times Educational Supplement reported.
The office's chief, David Bell, angered Muslims last week when he said Islamic schools could threaten the coherence of British society.
A spokeswoman for the education office defended Bell's comments as a contribution to "important public debates." She noted that Muslim schools educate 14,000 pupils in Britain, compared with 5,000 students in Evangelical Christian schools and 9,500 pupils in Jewish schools.
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, urged Islamic schools to take Bell's criticism seriously, even though some Muslims were offended.
"It is time that Muslim schools seriously consider admitting a proportion of children from other faiths to give their Muslim pupils an atmosphere of reality," Siddiqui said.