ABSTRACT
Over the last few years, communities have become the focus of a range of government policies and initiatives in the UK, particularly regarding the development of social cohesion between different ethnic and religious groups (Forrest and Kearns, 2001). These interventions have partly been a response to the 2001 riots in English Northern cities such as Bradford and Oldham, where anti-Muslim rallies organized by the far right led to violence between White and Asian youths. Debates about interfaith community relations have also impacted upon education institutions, for example through the recently introduced legal requirement for all English schools to demonstrate their commitment to promote social cohesion. This policy can be understood as an attempt to calm concerns that faith-based schools, in particular, may be guilty of contributing to ethnic and religious division through their selection procedures (Ouseley, 2001). Geographers have also started to recognize and investigate the spatial aspect of these debates, such as the extent of ethnic segregation in school neighbourhoods (e.g. Burgess et al., 2005) but there has, as yet, been a marked lack of research on religion and social cohesion issues within educational spaces.
