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Imams and other preachers should be sent into state schools to give "religious instruction" to pupils under a radical overhaul of faith-based education, teachers said.

No state funded school should select children based on their family's beliefs and daily religious assemblies should be abandoned, the National Union of Teachers suggested.

The union warned that the spread of separate faith schools under Government reforms threatens to undermine community relations, with children taught in segregated groups.

But the dominance of England's Christian schools is "unjust and unsustainable" amid growing demands from Muslim families who want their own religious state schools, the union said.

The NUT proposed a solution in which all state schools offer religious instruction to pupils who want it from different faiths.

This should also include providing private prayer facilities in schools as well as food that is appropriate for all religious groups, the union said in a new policy paper, In Good Faith.

Launching the paper, NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said the plan represented "more than simply religious education, this is religious instruction".

"I believe that there will be real benefits to all our communities and youngsters if we could find space within schools for pupils who are Roman Catholics, Anglican, Methodist, Jewish, Sikh and Muslim to have space for more religious instruction in schools.

"You could have imams coming in, you could have the local rabbi coming in and the local Roman Catholic priest. If there were opportunities where they all talked together to the youngsters, what a fantastic example that would be."

The policy document was formally adopted by delegates at the NUT's annual conference in Manchester.

The policy paper was released ahead of a planned debate at the conference on calls to abolish all state-funded faith schools.

7:50pm Monday 24th March 2008

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