Ex-Tory minister: free schools will let extremists in

The row about extremism in schools has over the past week widened out to the role of faith in education in general. This morning I interviewed Crispin Blunt, a former Conservative Justice Minister and Duncan Hames, a Lib Dem MP, for Radio 4’s The Week in Westminster. Blunt told me he fears that the Coalition’s own flagship free schools programme will sow division in England and allow extremist sects to educate children at the taxpayer’s expense. He went so far as to suggest that free schools would move England towards the situation in Northern Ireland: