ABSTRACT
There have been over 100 Jewish schools founded in Britain since the late seventeenth century, thirty-two of which operate full-time with government funding. Likewise, there are over 100 Muslim schools in the country, which have been established during the last 20 years, five of which receive financial support. While the two religious groups have different cultural and historic roots, they are similar in that they both represent minority groups seeking to sustain their own cultural heritage in the face of assimilationist trends. Both groups demonstrate the efforts of minority diaspora communities at maintaining their socio-historical heritage through educational efforts, that is the establishment of schools operating in the context of a non-Jewish and nonIslamic state. In so doing, both communities also operate in a self-imposed form of segregation, creating a type of cultural enclave locally based, while engaging with the wider community on their own terms. This is in an effort to offset what they see as cultural dilution and the production of hegemonic homogenizing forces caused by government policy on multiculturalism.
