Emails are circulating around the world, claiming that the UK has banned the teaching of the Holocaust in schools are not true. The false suggestion was made that the action has been taken by the government to avoid offending Muslim communities.

The source of the rumour may be a report that some history teachers were uncomfortable with sensitive subjects. In fact the government has reaffirmed that teaching children about the Holocaust is compulsory, and it is not banned elsewhere in the UK.

The report gave as an example a history department in “a northern city” which “recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting anti-semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils”.

The government said there was scope for schools to make their own decisions on what to teach within England’s national curriculum. The debate between Muslim and Jews about the Holocaust is a separate issue, and it was unfair to blame the Muslim Community for this rumour.

A spokesman for England’s Department for Education and Skills added: “Teaching of the Holocaust is already compulsory in schools at Key Stage 3 [ages 11 to 14] and it will remain so in the new KS3 curriculum from September 2008.”