Religious Education is outdated, unpopular and opens the door to proselytising.
There are many more subjects children and young people need to learn.
It's time to replace RE with something more appropriate for 21st century students.
It is important for children and young people to learn about different religions and beliefs. But we don't think our schools need a dedicated subject to do this – especially a subject as out-of-date and as irrelevant as Religious Education (RE).
Surveys consistently show RE is one of the least popular school subjects, an indication of its increasing irrelevance.
58% of British adults think religious studies is unimportant at secondary schools. And a quarter of England's secondary schools do not offer RE.
Unlike any other compulsory subject, RE is determined at a local level in England. In each local authority the agreed syllabus for RE is determined by committees representing the Church of England and other religion and belief groups, as well as the local authority and teacher's groups.
As a result, schools not only face a local lottery regarding what their RE syllabus will contain; they will have to teach a subject under significant control from religious interest groups. These groups are strongly motivated to ensure their religion is represented in an overwhelmingly positive light. The current arrangements mean the subject lacks objectivity.
Many faith schools don't even need to follow the locally agreed syllabus and can instead teach religion from their own exclusive viewpoint.
A new nationally-determined civics and citizenship subject could encompass teaching about religious and nonreligious worldviews and allow students to consider moral and ethical issues. Religion and belief could also be explored in other relevant areas of the curriculum.
In Wales, RE has recently been replaced with Religions, Values and Ethics (RVE). While we welcome this broader and more inclusive subject, problems remain regarding the influence of religious groups and exceptions allowing faith schools to teach confessional RE.
We need a reformed subject to ensure education about religion and belief is broad, balanced and proportionate.
We've created a series of resources – Exploring Secularism – for anyone wishing to explore issues of religion, belief, ethics, and worldviews in schools. The resources aim to provide teachers with the material they need to engage with secularism in an informed way.
As British society considers how to respond to greater religious diversity and growing irreligiosity, it is become increasingly important for children and young people to develop their understanding of the interaction between religion, society, and politics. The study of secularism explores this interaction, together with questions about how we balance freedom of, and from, religion with other rights.
Take action!
1. Write to your MP
Support our campaign to ensure every pupil has the same entitlement to high quality, non-partisan education about religious and non-religious worldviews.
2. Share your story
Tell us why you support this campaign, and how you are personally affected by the issue. You can also let us know if you would like assistance with a particular issue.
3. Join us
Become a member of the National Secular Society today! Together, we can separate religion and state for greater freedom and fairness.
Latest updates
Let children make their own minds up about religion, says report
Posted: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 12:10
The National Secular Society has welcomed an academic report which calls on English state schools to raise children in a religiously neutral manner.
The report 'How to regulate faith schools', which will be launched at the UCL Institute of Education in London tonight, says schools should not be allowed to teach religion "directively".
The report calls for a ban on confessional religious instruction and acts of school-directed worship during school hours. It argues that schools should be allowed to have a faith ethos provided they do not guide their students "in their direction to such an extent that it threatens their autonomy".
The authors, from the University of Warwick and University College London, write that it is "important for individuals to decide for themselves what kind of life to live and to reflect and act upon those decisions in a well-informed manner".
"There should be no classes that encourage children to believe that they are duty-bound to worship God, that Jesus is the son of God whose crucifixion and resurrection redeemed mankind, that Allah is the one true God and only He is worthy of worship, or that there is no God and human beings can only find ethical and spiritual fulfilment without belief in a divinity."
The report adds that schools should introduce "a universal entitlement to an adequate programme of civic, religious, ethical and moral education", to be known as CREaM.
The proposed CREaM syllabus would "explicitly place religion alongside a broader education in citizenship, ethics and morality".
"Non-directive" religious education would be part of CREaM. Its purpose would be "to equip children with the understanding and capacity to decide for themselves what gods (if any) there are and what goals and relationships are worth pursuing".
The report calls for the 50% cap on faith-based admissions which currently applies to new faith schools to apply to all state-funded faith schools. Earlier this year the government decided not to lift the 50% cap after vigorous campaigning by the NSS and others.
The authors say independent faith schools should only retain their charitable status if they accept the same regulation as state-funded schools. Independent schools which engaged in religious instruction or operated an unrestricted faith-based admissions policy would lose their charitable status.
The report says parents should be required to register with their local authority if they wish to educate their children at home. Home educating parents would also be required to provide an education that "attends to the development of educational goods" and to teach the CREaM curriculum. They would be allowed to teach their children religion directively.
Alastair Lichten, the NSS's education and schools officer, said the proposals "are largely a welcome dose of common sense".
"Education should value individual autonomy and give children the tools they need to make informed decisions, including about religion. This report has recognised that and the proposals would certainly represent a welcome change if adopted.
"The state should put children's independent rights ahead of the interests of religious leaders. Ending collective worship and teaching about religion in an informed rather than a confessional manner would both strike major blows in favour of that. And the proposals for change beyond the state sector are sensible and balanced.
"While the report is practical and recognises where we are rather than a theoretical ideal, it doesn't shy away from challenging the entrenched interests of the faith school lobby. While the proposals to remove faith schools' special privileges would mitigate much of the harm they do, it's difficult to see what role they could really play in a truly religiously neutral education system."
The NSS has long campaigned for the end of compulsory worship in schools. Under the law state schools in England and Wales are required to ensure children take part in worship on a daily basis.
The NSS calls for reform of RE so children have a national entitlement to a broad, balanced education about religion and belief. Last month a major report by the Commission on Religious Education called for RE to be replaced by a subject entitled 'Religion and Worldviews'.
Mr Lichten said: "High quality education about worldviews (religious or otherwise) may well be best delivered as part of the proposed CREaM syllabus."
The NSS's No More Faith Schools campaign calls for the end of state-funded faith schools.
The report said the proposals were "grounded in a normative framework of basic values" and "explicitly" appealed to "philosophical principles".
"Some will doubtless regard our proposals as reflecting a secular worldview, suspecting us of being hostile to religious believers… But schools that do not direct children towards particular religions are not anti-religious, and antipathy towards religion plays no role in our thinking."
The report was written by Professor Adam Swift, of University College London, and University of Warwick academics Dr Ruth Wareham, Professor Matthew Clayton and Professor Andrew Mason. It has been published by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.
Replace RE with ‘religion and worldviews’, says commission
Posted: Sun, 9 Sep 2018 06:09
The National Secular Society has given a "qualified welcome" to a commission's recommendations to replace RE with a subject entitled 'Religion and Worldviews' and introduce a national entitlement to it.
In its report on the future of RE teaching the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) has said all publicly-funded schools should be required to teach the national entitlement. All pupils should be entitled to study it until the age of 16 (year 11) and post-16 students should have the opportunity to do so.
But the report recommended allowing Section 48 inspections, where religious bodies rather than Ofsted inspect the way RE is taught in faith schools, to continue. The NSS has said this recommendation gives too much leeway to religious interests.
The report said schools' programmes of study must "reflect the complex, diverse and plural nature of worldviews" and may "draw from a range of religious, philosophical, spiritual and other approaches to life". The report says if pupils encounter only religious and not non-religious worldviews, or smaller, local, indigenous or newer religions, their understanding of the subject is "impoverished".
It called for a review of the requirement for local authorities to draw up agreed syllabuses on religious education, a measure the NSS has long advocated.
But it recommended changing, rather than abolishing, the local authority bodies charged with drawing up the RE curriculum. The bodies, currently known as Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs), would become 'Local Advisory Networks for Religion and Worldviews'. The NSS has called for the abolition of SACREs.
The report said the Department for Education should provide legal clarification on whether the change in the subject's name would affect parents' right to withdraw their children from the subject.
It added that schools would be expected to publish a detailed statement about how they meet the national entitlement.
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said the recommendations deserved "a qualified welcome".
"The introduction of a national entitlement to teaching about religion and worldviews is a positive step. If enacted these proposals would represent significant progress although the deference to religious interests has limited the commission's ambitions, making it an inevitable fudge.
"But if the government is prepared to listen then this report is a potential game changer for the way we teach about religion in schools. All children should have an education that enables them to develop their own independent and informed beliefs. Whilst the proposed national entitlement is welcome, a more fundamental review of religion's role in education is necessary to make this a reality and to challenge confessional teaching and undue religious influence in our state-funded schools."
On the recommended name of the new subject, Mr Evans said: "The inclusion of the word 'religion' appears to be a sop to religious interests – which could undermine efforts to reinvigorate and improve the reputation of this contentious are of the curriculum. Calling a subject 'Religion and Worldviews' is a bit like calling PE 'Football and Sport'. Religion would fit in to a study of worldviews but should not get special attention."
The NSS submitted evidence to the commission ahead of both its interim report, which recommended "strategic, urgent intervention" last year, and the final one published today.
The society called for legislative change to enshrine a national entitlement giving every pupil the right to high quality, non-partisan education about religion and belief. It argued that schools should teach about a diverse range of religious and non-religious worldviews.
It said pupils should study how people's worldviews may influence their thinking on philosophical, moral and cultural issues and how the freedom to manifest religion and belief interacts with the rights of others.
And it called for a separation between any form of confessionalism or religious instruction and education about RE, arguing that the promotion of religion should only take place in a voluntary or non-state funded environment.
The NSS has set out its vision for high-quality, non-partisan education through its 21st Century RE For All campaign.
In April the NSS hosted a conference on the future of teaching about religion and belief, where panellists from educational backgrounds argued for reform. The keynote speaker, philosopher AC Grayling, called for teaching to look broadly at "the history of ideas", including topics such as classical mythology and different types of thought.
A survey published this week revealed that religious education is was one the subjects least enjoyed by pupils.
The final report is available to download here: Final Report of the Commission on RE
An executive summary is available here: Final Report (Exec Summary) of the Commission on RE
