EVER since I came to Bolton I have been thinking about the rights and wrongs of Faith Schools.

I am particularly concerned about those schools that are funded by the state. Bolton has Roman Catholic schools, Church of England schools and, in other parts of the country, there are Jewish schools, Sikh schools, Muslims schools and so on.

Is it right that we should educate our children in this way? For me the most important question is what we think education is for.

Education is certainly there to provide our young people with the basic tools they need to participate in society. Maths, English, Science and all the other subjects are important. Without these children are disadvantaged when they come to adult life. It is also important to keep standards high.

But education is more than this. To my mind the most important thing in education is teaching people to appreciate what I call the otherness of the other. Most of us would prefer to stay within our familiar groups and traditions. We don't mind exploring a little bit but we like to come home to what is familiar. This is why human beings have a tendency to live in tribes. Tribes are places where we can feel secure because we know the rules. In tribes we gain strength from one another and we can find our place.

For most of us in our modern society we don't live in traditional tribes. Sometimes living without tribes can make us feel very insecure so we form what sociologists call New Tribes. These are not based on the family like traditional tribes, they are often based on shared interests and shared values.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to belong to a tribe. But there is something wrong when it prevents us exploring different ways of life. To stay within one's tribe is to be impoverished. Education should be about helping us to go beyond our tribe to explore strange and different worlds. In many of the church primary schools we do just that. Even though they are church schools we accept pupils from many other traditions and we build on it by celebrating not just the Christian festivals but also such festivals as Diwali and Eid. The trouble comes when we get to secondary level. Here the divide is often sharper. We get schools which are almost exclusively Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim. If I am right about education being about learning difference then I want to question whether such exclusive schools should be state funded.

I agree that we all need to feel secure in our own tradition. For this reason Faith schools do have their place. But if that means being totally exclusive then I don't think we can call it education. If you have a different point of view do write in to the BEN.

Michael Williams, Vicar of Bolton Parish Church.