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 calls for rethink over Government plans to relax faith schools admissions rules
Posted: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 08:51
The National Secular Society has urged the Government to rethink plans to allow new faith schools to select all of their pupils on the basis of faith.
The BBC reported that the Government will propose 'relaxing' the admissions cap which currently means new faith schools can select only half of their pupils by faith.
In a letter to Prime Minister Theresa May, the NSS said that the admission cap was a "half-hearted" attempt to "deflect understandable criticism that publicly funded schools should not be religiously segregated and discriminating", but that abolishing the cap would be a "misguided retrograde step".
Just last year the NSS received assurances for Lord Nash, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools, that the Government had "no plans to review the 50% limit for faith-based admissions to free schools", describing the cap as "an important way of supporting these schools to be inclusive and to meet the needs of a broad mix of families".
The Government now claims that allowing more discrimination in faith school admissions would make "faith schools of all kinds do more to make sure their pupils integrate with children of other backgrounds."
Only the "most naïve" would believe this, the NSS said, adding that the change would have "the opposite effect."
The Government should instead act to "remove all religious discrimination in admissions to publicly funded schools", the NSS wrote.
NSS campaigns director Stephen Evans commented: "Separating school children on the basis of their parents' faith is no way of building a cohesive society or preparing young people for life in modern Britain.
"In the long-term the only real solution is to have a secular and inclusive education system which isn't organised around the religious beliefs of parents. In the meantime, the Government should resist any regressive demands to allow faith schools to select even more pupils on the basis of their parents' religious beliefs and activities.
"These deeply troubling proposals come after considerable lobbying efforts from the Catholic Education Service and other faith groups. The pernicious influence of religious groups over education policy is making our education system one of the last bastions of religious discrimination. The Government should be looking to end discrimination - not extend it."
The abolition of the admissions cap will particularly benefit Catholic schools. A No 10 source told the BBC that the cap "has prevented new Catholic schools from opening."
The Catholic Education Service welcomed the proposals and said it would enable "thousands of new Catholic school places across the country."
Professor Ted Cantle, an expert in community cohesion and intercultural education, told the NSS he found it "hard to believe that the Government has agreed to drop what is only a minimal commitment to more mixed schools, when we know schools are becoming more segregated. And only last year the Government warned about the dangers of schoolchildren have little or no understanding of others."
Professor Cantle's 2001 report into race riots in Northern England made a number of recommendations for positive policies to tackle a "depth of polarisation" around segregated communities. However this year Professor Cantle has warned that Britain remains and is increasingly divided along ethnic and cultural lines – with "more segregation in schools and more segregation in workplaces" and that faith schools were particularly problematic.
Professor Cantle went on to say: "It is also hard to believe that faith organisations would want- let alone lobby for- this change. This would make them more concerned about their own interests, than that of the wider community.
"If this change is implemented, I hope that the governors for each school will be responsible enough to reject the change out of hand."
Sex education should be mandatory to help prevent child abuse, says former Solicitor General
Posted: Tue, 2 Aug 2016 15:05
Former Solicitor General Vera Baird QC, the Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, considers that compulsory PSHE in primary schools is "key" to tackling "sexual exploitation" and child abuse.
Writing in the Guardian, the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners and former Labour MP said that compulsory sex education was crucial to tackling "endemic sexual exploitation".
She urged the Government to act to aid prevention of abuse, noting that "police forces across England and Wales investigated 70,000 cases of child sexual abuse in 2015".
Despite this vast number of cases, she warned that "child sexual abuse in all its forms is significantly under-reported, with only one in eight victims coming to the attention of police and children's services."
She lambasted ministers for blocking "the one step that can protect young people" and said PSHE should be compulsory for "every school".
"Schools are currently required to make provision for PSHE education only from the age of 11 and only in maintained schools, not academies," she wrote.
Baird blamed the failure to make PSHE compulsory in all schools, which former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan was reportedly in favour of, on "David Cameron and some religious groups".
She said that while there should be an "accommodation" of some kind with the "sensitivities of religious parents", these concerns were "hard to understand" given "the overwhelming expert view that PSHE increases protection for children".
The National Secular Society has called for sex and relationships education to be made a statutory part of the national curriculum for all schools, including faith schools and academies.
Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: "Given the shocking extent of historic child sex abuse in religious settings, religious organisations - always so keen to impart moral guidance - should be keener than anyone do everything they can to prevent abuse occurring again. Yet all too predictably, many such groups are blocking compulsory PSHE on religious grounds.
"We call on the new Prime Minister to reverse David Cameron's decision on compulsory PSHE in primary schools, and hope that Theresa May will require all schools to provide compulsory age-appropriate sex and relationships education.
"We disagree with Vera Baird on withdrawal however, there should be no ability for withdrawal as the pupils most in need of this education are the very one whose parents are most likely to withdraw them."
The National Secular Society has written to Justine Greening MP, the new Secretary of State for Education, urging her to reconsider the decision of the last Prime Minister and take steps to make PSHE compulsory in all schools.
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)
