Manchester King David High pupils were joined by local Muslim students for a special HMD assembly attended by MPs Ivan Lewis and John Leech and the Lord Mayor of Manchester, Councillor Naeem ul Hassan.

The Islamic High School for Girls and the Kassim Darwish Grammar were the other participants in the ceremony in which a sheikh and a rabbi offered separate prayers for peace.

KD Jewish studies head Rabbi Benjamin Rickman told pupils that it was time “to get real” on dialogue with other faiths, “not just because it ticks an educational box but because we need to rewrite the narrative of mistrust and suspicion between our communities”.

Ahsan Khushtar, 15, from Kassim Darwich, whose school emblem shares the KD with its Jewish counterpart, said he lived among Jews in Manchester’s Whitefield area. “Our communities don’t intermingle, but we should get on with each other.”

Pupils from St Monica’s Roman Catholic High also attended the assembly and there are plans to create a three faiths ambassador programme between the four schools.