The “transport crisis” faced by Hertsmere Jewish Primary School (‘School facing transport crisis’, Borehamwood & Elstree Times, September 23) is the product of failures in both planning and education policies.

Pupils at ordinary primary schools live in their immediate locality, and travel to and from them on foot or by cycle — so there is no need for special buses, and no “crisis” is caused by the refusal or inability of the county council to continue to fund these.

And, because they are open to all comers, ordinary schools can reflect the whole of the communities they serve, equipping their pupils to rub shoulders with their contemporaries from a rich diversity of backgrounds.

Sectarian schools, in contrast, are introverted and dogmatic, bringing their pupils into contact only with the offspring of parents with the same narrow range of religious beliefs, and preparing them to reproduce and perpetuate the same social divisions in their adult lives.

It is the fault of the planning system if a school has been permitted to establish itself on a rural site with no access by public transport, resulting — in the absence of school buses — in wastefully long daily journeys by car and all the costs of congestion and pollution to which these give rise.

And it is the fault of the education system if public money is being used to promote and sustain such denominationally-exclusive institutions. In most European countries this would be unthinkable, if not illegal, and state subsidies for denominational schools should have no place in 21st Century Britain.

John Cartledge
Haddon Close, Borehamwood