Faith schools undermine equality, choice and social cohesion.
Let's build an inclusive education system today, to ensure an inclusive society tomorrow.
Our education system should be open and welcoming to all. That's why we want publicly funded faith schools phased out and an end to religiously selective school admissions.
Around a third of publicly funded schools in England and Wales are faith schools – schools with a religious character. Scottish and Northern Irish schools are still divided along sectarian lines.
Separating children according to religion is divisive and leads to religious, ethnic and socio-economic segregation.
To make matters worse, many faith schools can discriminate against pupils and teachers who do not share the religion of the school.
Parents are entitled to raise their children within a faith tradition, but they are not entitled to enlist the help of the state to do so. The state should not allow the schools it funds to inculcate children into a particular religion.
Faith schools seriously limit choice for parents who do not want a religious education for their children, or do not share the faith of the local school. Our research has found that 18,000 families were assigned faith schools against their wishes in England in 2017 alone.
Despite a consistent and dramatic decline in church attendance, and a growing majority of non-religious citizens, successive governments have paved the way for ever greater religious involvement in education, often to the detriment of inclusive community schools.
A secular approach to education would ensure publicly funded schools are equally welcoming to all children, regardless of their backgrounds.
Take action!
1. Write to your MP
Please call on your MP to support a secular, inclusive education system for all.
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
NSS says integration efforts should focus on common citizenship
Posted: Tue, 5 Jun 2018 16:52
The National Secular Society has called on the government to treat citizens as individuals and to clamp down on the segregation caused by faith schools to boost social integration.
We made the calls in response to a government consultation on its Integrated Communities Strategy green paper, which outlined proposals to tackle the issue, particularly in England.
The paper made clear that "the freedom to practise religion needs to be balanced against the rights and freedoms of others" – a statement we strongly welcomed in our response.
We said integration and social cohesion would be "best served by the state defending the absolute freedom of religious and other belief, whilst at the same time being clear that the right to manifest religious belief is only assured insofar as it does not impinge on the rights and freedoms of others".
But the paper also included a proposal to expand a scheme supporting faith institutions and expressly backed faith schools, despite saying new schools "should be inclusive and promote community cohesion".
Our response said the state should "treat all citizens equally as individuals rather than as members of communities" and increase opportunities for "ordinary people in particular groups to express their own views, rather than being spoken for".
We advised that providing support to faith communities needed be done with "great caution" to avoid inadvertently strengthening intolerant groups antagonistic to integration.
We criticised recent multicultural and multifaith approaches to dealing with changing social demographics, arguing that they give "unjustified power to group leaders, sometimes at the expense of individual human rights".
Our response said a focus on 'communal rights' under the multicultural framework has led to horrendous abuses, such female genital mutilation (FGM) or forced marriage. We said people (particularly women) have been left isolated from mainstream society and trapped in cultural and religious blocs, within which group pressure and 'shame' culture has denied them their legal rights.
We expressed disappointment at the paper's failure to challenge faith schools. We said non-faith schools were "achieving far more in promoting integration" than their faith-based counterparts, particularly because they do not promote specific religious or non-religious worldviews, are welcoming environments for pupils from all backgrounds and do not engage in faith-based discrimination against pupils or teachers.
We expressed support for efforts to: promote fundamental British values in schools; protect children's rights in home education, unregistered schools and independent schools; and ensure lawful free speech can thrive at universities.
We also voiced support for efforts to bring people from different communities together to play a part in civic life, emphasising that those "where people come together over shared interests and local issues" are preferable to those based around religious identities.
We warned that the entrenchment of sharia councils and parallel legal systems within minority communities creates a space for the perpetuation of patriarchal control and harm to women. We also criticised a proposal to require civil marriages to be conducted before or at the same time as religious ceremonies, arguing this would represent unreasonable state encroachment on religious practice.
Instead we recommended a complete separation of religion and state in the institution of marriage, with marriage reformed as a civil institution and no religious 'marriage' having any legal bearing without a separate civil marriage also taking place.
We added that the government should challenge 'modesty culture', particularly in schools, to empower girls and women. Last year our research found that girls in dozens of schools in England were being forced to wear hijabs.
Stephen Evans, the NSS's chief executive, said the government had "identified a worthwhile set of problems to tackle" but "remains too reluctant to tackle several of their most significant causes".
"The government must recognise that empowering faith groups will not help to integrate people of all faiths and none into a tolerant and harmonious society. If it is serious about achieving its stated aims it must stand for the principle that everyone should enjoy the same rights and be subject to the same duties.
"It must also confront religious leaders who stand in the way of that. In particular it must prioritise tackling faith-based segregation in education and rolling back religious groups' influence in schooling more widely."
Many of the proposals the strategy makes cover policy areas which are devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The paper said the UK government would "work closely with the devolved administrations to share learning about the integration challenges and our learning of what works in tackling them".
Last month the government dropped plans to lift the 50% faith-based admissions cap on new faith schools in England, recognising that such a policy would be inconsistent with the policies outlined in the integration green paper.
When the paper was published in March we expressed concern over the government's proposed reliance on faith groups and failure to tackle religious segregation in schools.
Parents protest imposition of religious status on Norfolk school
Posted: Fri, 25 May 2018 17:19
The National Secular Society has backed parents who are protesting against the merger of a non-religious school into a Christian one in Norfolk.
The parents held a demonstration outside Trafalgar College in Great Yarmouth on Thursday against the merger of the college with the Christian school Great Yarmouth Charter Academy. They expressed fears that religion will be imposed on their children.
Trafalgar, which does not have a religious ethos, will close. All its pupils are set to re-locate to the Charter Academy site, which will retain its religious designation. This effectively means a non-religious school will be closed in order to expand a religious school.
Inspiration Trust, which runs the two schools, wrote to parents on 18 May to confirm the merger. All pupils currently taught at Trafalgar will move to the Charter Academy by September next year. The letter also explained that "to help ensure a smooth transition", Charter Academy's deputy head Iain Mackintosh would be transferred to Trafalgar "with immediate effect".
On Wednesday the BBC reported that Mackintosh excluded eight pupils on his first day as headteacher of Trafalgar.
Louise Alderman, who chairs the Parents, Teachers and Friends Association (PTFA) at Trafalgar, told the NSS that Inspiration Trust were "acting recklessly with our children's education".
"Our challenge to the Inspiration Trust is to drop the religious designation at Trafalgar on the basis there is no place for it in modern society, it is not our (parental) choice and if, as the trust say, it's nothing to worry about then they will have no problem in removing it from the merger.
"Keeping the religious designation could allow at any point the Inspiration Trust to be able to actively discriminate on this basis if it chooses to do so. And because of the now complete breakdown in trust between the parent body and the trust they can't seriously think that we would believe a word of what they're telling us."
Another parent with a son at Trafalgar told the NSS that she was considering moving home due to the merger.
"We are Pagan and are not happy about being forced into a Christian school," said Natasha James.
"I have lived in Yarmouth all my life and have been forced not only to search for a new school for my son, but have also been left with no option except to move to Gorleston so that we have a better chance when applying for schools.
"The last thing I want is for my son to end up in Charter. I would home school him before that happens."
NSS education and schools officer Alastair Lichten said: "We yet again see the bias against non-religious schools here. It's entirely legitimate for parents to be concerned about the imposition of a Christian ethos on their children's school. The complete disregard of the basic right to freedom of belief in this decision is chilling."
Thursday's protest follows another demonstration held in October 2017, when the plans were first announced. The NSS wrote to Inspiration Trust to express its opposition at the time.
The NSS expressed particular concerns that the trust had made misleading claims that Charter Academy "is not a faith school" in its consultation page and FAQ document for the planned merger and ignored parents' views regarding the religious status of the academy.
Image: © James Dwyer-Coins
More information
Protect relationships and sex education
Age-appropriate relationships and sex education should be every child’s right.
Remove religious appointees from Scottish councils
Religion shouldn’t grant people privileged places in local democracy.
Research and reports
The faith schools research bank
The choice delusion: how faith schools restrict school choice
Three in ten families across England live in areas where most or all of the closest primary schools are faith schools and thousands are being assigned faith schools against their wishes.
Power grab: Academisation and the threat to secular education
Academisation has enabled faith groups to increase their influence over all schools, including those with no religious character. With little public debate, religious governance has increased, while secular oversight has diminished.
Religiosity inspections: the case against faith-based reviews of state schools
Faith based inspections of state schools are an unnecessary drain on public finds, frame widely held values as exclusive, and promote biased religious education.
Faith-shaped holes: How religious privilege is undermining equality law (PDF, 1.3 Mb)
