Abstract
In February 2010, a report from the think-tank Civitas, the institute for the study of the civil society, claimed that some Islamic schools were promoting fundamentalist views. Therefore, British politician Ed Balls ordered Ofsted to investigate a small sample of faith schools to find out if they meet obligations to teach pupils about other religions and cultures. These recent investigations have raised the debate about faith schools and more generally about the conception of the British identity. The definition of the British identity partly depends on the conception of the society in which Britons live. Two visions of the British society are basically held. Either the British society is a "plural multi-cultural society" as defined by Professor Amartya Sen; or the British society is thought to be a mono-cultural society in which different groups, with different languages, traditions and religions, live side by side with little interaction.
