Ofsted has identified a significant growth in the number of independent faith schools. There are now around 250 such schools, with around 100 Muslim schools educating around 14,000 pupils and more than 50 Jewish schools educating around 9,500 pupils. There are also more than 100 evangelical Christian schools.

Mr Bell said:

"Parents should be able to choose how their children are educated and should be able to pay to do so. That is the mark of a free and open society. But faith should not be blind. I worry that many young people are being educated in faith, with little appreciation of their wider responsibilities and obligations to British society.

"This growth needs to be carefully but sensitively monitored by government to ensure that pupils at all schools receive an understanding of not only their own faith but other faiths and the wider tenets of British society. We must not allow recognition of diversity to become apathy in the face of any challenge to our coherence as a nation. We must be intolerant of intolerance."

Full press release here.