Don’t isolate our children

In his article, Mr Shuker argues that “schools exist not just as a mechanism for learning and training, but as powerful sites of social cohesion and integration”.

He traces the way in which the changing ethnic and economic profile of his constituency in recent decades has resulted in local schools becoming increasingly mono-cultural in their intake, a tendency that has been exacerbated by successive governments’ unwillingness to resist demands for greater parental choice.

There is a very real risk, he believes, that this will result in an ever-more divided community, making it difficult to generate the social capital a decent society needs.

And citing an official report on community cohesion, he points out that “the most systematic inhibitor of mixing is faith”.

According to a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Britain is one of only three out of its 33 member countries that allows selective admission to publicly-funded schools on the basis of religious preferences (the others being Estonia and Ireland).

What has any of this to do with Borehamwood?

Well, simply the fact that in your issue of January 30 (‘A vision for a new school’, Borehamwood & Elstree Times), you headline a proposal to create yet another denominational school in our town.

In this instance, the promoters happen to be Jewish, but the damage such schools can do, by segregating children at a very young age into single-faith educational ghettos, is the same irrespective of the religious affiliation in question.

We are informed by one of its promoters, with unconscious irony, that it’s going to be an “all-inclusive Jewish school, which we haven’t seen before”.

No, indeed we haven’t, because a moment’s thought shows the concept to be self-contradictory.

And further, “whatever sect you identify with, you’ll be welcome here”— leaving those of us with no sectarian identification to conclude that we will not.

The justification for this project is, apparently, the fact that 33.3 per cent of the community in Borehamwood is Jewish.

But that is no better reason for isolating these children in a separate school than if, say, 33.3 per cent of the town’s parents happened to be Watford FC supporters, or UKIP voters, or Oyster card holders, or left-handed. Unless, of course, the true purpose of the school is to indoctrinate its pupils in a particular set of religious dogmas, which is not a proper use of the public funding its promoters are seeking.

We need only to look at Northern Ireland, or Israel/Palestine, to see the ultimate consequences of social and educational segregation on sectarian lines.

The surest route to cohesion in our community is to ensure that all of its children mix together in the same classrooms and playgrounds, and that private religious affiliations do not intrude into any aspect of our public life.

Which of our town’s politicians will have the courage to speak out in support of Gavin Shuker?

John Cartledge

Haddon Close, Borehamwood