” “The amendment to the Education Law, under which the schools run by the Catholic Church and funded by the British Government should give one quarter of their places to students from other religions, is to be discussed on October 30th at the House of Lords. “We oppose to the quota, because it would mean sending Catholics away from our schools”, stated the archbishop of Birmingham, Vincent Nichols. The amendment results from the British Government’s decision to fund, for the very first time, Muslim schools along Christian and Jewish ones. Tony Blair’s government fears Islamic schools might fuel religious extremism and wants them to admit students from different religious backgrounds, a provision that would then be extended to Christian and Jewish schools too. For the moment, the law would only apply to new schools, but, according to the Catholic weekly “The Tablet”, a powerful lay political lobby would like the new quota to be applied to all Catholic schools. The Catholic Church runs 10% of the schools of England and Wales, in many of which students from other religions are already one quarter more than the rest. The problem would concern those schools in which applications exceed the number of available places, which might be forced to say "no" to some Catholic families.” “
