Leicester and London have emerged as front-runners for Britain’s first Hindu secondary school.
I-Foundation is the charity behind the Krishna-Avanti School in Edgware, north London, the UK’s first state-funded primary school for Hindus. It opened in September 2008 in temporary accommodation and in September last year moved into its new premises.
Nitesh Gor, I-Foundation director and a governor of the school, said: ‘We have conducted significant consultation and research within both north west London, Harrow and Barnet specifically, and Leicester. It is very clear that there is overwhelming demand for such a facility.
‘We feel that the government at both local and national levels needs to act to ensure that all faiths are treated equally, and currently, given that Hinduism is the only major faith without its own secondary school, this is clearly not the case.’
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) provided £11.1m towards the £13.5m budget of the Krishna-Avanti School.
Officials at the DCSF say all the money available for new secondary school building is already committed elsewhere.
However, the I-Foundation, run by parents, is keen to change that before the first pupils graduate in September 2015 from the Edgware school.
Lord Dholakia, of the Liberal Democrats, said: ‘It is simply not sustainable for Hindu parents to be excluded from often outstanding faith-based educational opportunities already available to Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Jews, Muslims and Sikhs. The I-Foundation’s plans offer the opportunity to put right this inadvertent wrong.’
The school has facilities for rainwater harvesting and ground source heat pumps to provide 70 per cent of the heating. It is regarded as being one of the greenest schools in the UK.
The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) is its official faith partner.
Gor said: ‘We combine the ethical values and moral discipline which accompany faith education, and prepare our children to play a full part in British society.
‘In only our second year, we had five applicants for every two places.’
On a typical day, pupils start by chanting prayers at a carved white marble temple at the centre of the school building. Lessons during the day are interspersed with yoga and meditation classes as well as tending to the garden.
Negin Algani, mother of five-year-old pupil Lakshmi Narasimha, said: ‘Not only does the school provide an excellent education, but also a spiritual foundation. We like the teachers’ unique approach; having a temple within the school itself is wonderful.’