By Laurie Watson

A MUSLIM state school would be welcomed in Dundee should funding become available under an SNP government, the city council’s education convener has claimed.

Councillor Kevin Keenan said he shared “fairly similar views” to SNP leader Alex Salmond, who told a newspaper yesterday that a Nationalist win in next May’s Scottish Parliament elections would lead to the creation of the first Muslim faith state school in Scotland.

Mr Salmond also pledged to extend the right to denominational education, already enjoyed by Catholics, to other faiths.

Mr Salmond said, “We must listen to representations from within the Muslim community, in particular, and make a full assessment of the demand for Muslim schools.

“We already have the good example of the success of Scotland’s Catholic schools and our successful Jewish school. My experience, strengthened by speaking to people around Scotland, is that our diversity as a nation is also one of our strengths.”

Mr Keenan said there were no funds available in Dundee City Council’s education budget to consider pursuing the creation of a Muslim school.

He said, “I can’t comment on exactly how successful a Muslim state school would be but I daresay it would be welcomed in the city.

“The difficulty would be how do you divide up the school estate into a number of schools and the issue of parental choice would have to be taken into account as well.”

Dundee’s first encounter with a Muslim-faith school ended last year when the troubled private Muslim school, Imam Muhammad Zakariya, in Strathern Road closed its doors.

The school was the only one of its kind in Scotland. However, since opening in 2001 it had a troubled existence, with official inspections identifying a number of areas of concern.

The decision was taken to close the school and only extra curricular activities have taken place at the site in recent months.

Mr Keenan said the difficulties experienced by the private school should not come into account when considering a similar state-funded project.

He said, “Clearly there were real issues with that school. The HMI report blew it out of the water and it closed its doors before a second inspection could take place that would have demanded it close.”

Mr Salmond’s call for an increase in faith schools comes after several senior politicians called for an end to denominational schools, claiming they spread sectarianism.

Lord Maxton, the Labour peer, was the latest to call for an end to faith schools, claiming they fostered intolerance between Protestants and Catholics.

However, Councillor Keenan said there were are as many calls to scrap faith schools as there were to increase them and he backed Dundee’s denominational schools.

He said the education committee had shown a commitment to evenly distributing funds across all schools, regardless of faith.

He said, “The decision to build a new Catholic secondary school was made because that was where the investment was needed across the school estate. A few years ago it was the Morgan which needed investment.

“The decision is made regardless of the denomination of the school.”

Mr Keenan said the issue of denominational schools was part of a wider debate, which he would be happy to enter into with the education committee and parents.