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
Local councils lose challenge against unwanted Sikh free school
Posted: Mon, 18 Jul 2016 13:27
Two councils have lost a high court battle against the decision to have a Sikh faith school situated in the small village of Stoke Poges.
The Parish Council and South Bucks District Council both sought a high court ruling over the location of the Sikh-ethos free school in the village.
Stoke Poges Parish Council said the free school was "neither needed nor wanted".
Saera Carter, Vice-Chair of Stoke Poges Parish Council, said that the decision by the high court was "a huge disappointment for small communities everywhere."
She said that residents had been "bullied and ignored" by the Government and that free schools were "fundamentally flawed".
"We hope that, despite losing our challenge today, it will persuade the DfE to look much more carefully at where it sites Free Schools and that these are kept only to locations where they are both needed and wanted.
"The residents of Stoke Poges have demonstrated that central Government can be challenged, and, in a democracy, it is right that it should be, but it is a pity that this has had such a lasting and significant impact on our village and surrounding villages."
The school has been refused planning permission in 2013 by both councils, and an independent Planning Inspector said the school would make adjacent houses "uninhabitable". But the then-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, overruled that recommendation and approved the faith school despite local objections and his own promise to stop "the compulsory imposition of Whitehall know best decisions".
The Council said that the opening of the school has had a significant financial impact on families as parents will now be forced to pay for travel to schools they would have otherwise been subsidised for had the Khalsa Academy not opened.
50% of the Khalsa Academy's places are allocated on the basis of religion and when the school first opened local residents objected that it seemed to be focusing its recruitment on Sikhs living in neighbouring Slough, Southall and Harrow rather than serving the local community in Stoke Poges.
In 2015 the National Secular Society assisted a number of families who were allocated a place at the school. One mother complained said that she feared her daughter would be a "religious minority" and "isolated" at the school when "each day they take students off for morning prayers and my daughter would not be doing that".
Admissions documents state that the school has "regular religious functions", though it claims it is welcoming to all. The school's website says that it exists to "serve all members of the Sikh community" as well as those of other faiths and no faith, provided they "support and respect the religious ethos of the school."
Stephen Evans, the campaigns director of the National Secular Society, commented: "This ruling means that children from Sikh families will continue to be bussed in to attend a faith school in Stoke Poges, and that local people will have to send their children to a school that is at odds with their worldview or pay for school buses to reach non-Sikh schools they would otherwise have been subsidised for.
"Faith-based schooling results in religious segregation and the imposition of religion in schools against parents' wishes. That's why we campaign for a secular education system that doesn't divide children by religious background."
NSS criticise Church plan to open 125 new free schools
Posted: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 12:49
The Church of England is planning to bid for control of more than one quarter of the new free schools announced by the Government.
A paper distributed at the Church's General Synod said the chance of controlling more than a quarter of all new schools in England was a "unique opportunity".
500 free schools are due to open by 2020.
The Church already controls the education of approximately 1 million children.
Stephen Evans, the campaigns director of the National Secular Society, called the plans "alarming".
"The significant changes we're seeing in the country's religion and belief landscape means the Church's role in state education needs to be diminished not expanded," he said.
"In an increasingly secularised society in which church attendances continue to fall, the Church of England knows that running schools is the most effective way, if not the only way, for it to reach children and their families with its message. One has to wonder to what extent the Church's keen interest in running schools is motivated by their need for self-preservation.
"Handing over vast swathes of publicly funded education to religious organisations may serve the Church, but it's hard to see how it serves families who aren't interested in religion yet are finding it increasingly difficult to secure a secular education for their children.
"The Government also needs to question just how sustainable it is to hand over large sections of our education system to a Church seemingly in terminal decline.
"In a religiously diverse and secularised society it makes little sense to organise education along religious lines. The additional school places needed should be created in secular and inclusive schools equally welcoming to all pupils, irrespective of their faith backgrounds."
In the past senior Anglicans had voiced criticism of the free schools programme but Church officials now view free schools as "the only show in town", the Telegraph reported.
In a paper for the Synod, the Church of England Education Office wrote that the "God of all creation is concerned with everything related to education."
They promised an "explicitly" "Christian foundation" "across the curriculum" for all Church of England faith schools and said they were "committed" to offering pupils "an encounter with Jesus Christ".
But in addition to their plans for their own schools, the Church said that a Christian "vision for education can still be expressed and promoted" in non-faith schools as well.
The National Secular Society is frequently contacted by parents who are concerned about the imposition of religion in schools, including non-religious schools, and the Church is making extensive use of academisation to take control of non-religious schools by incorporating them into explicitly religious multi-academy trusts.
It is also using academisation to foist a more religious ethos on voluntary controlled schools, which are generally less explicitly religious than voluntary aided ones – in many cases against the wishes of teachers and the schools' own church-appointed governors.
In the Synod paper, the Church's Education Office said their "vision for education reaches beyond Church of England schools".
They said it would be "unbiblical" to separate "the Church from involvement in education" and that their goal of "Christian participation" in non-faith schools was "already being achieved".
There can be no neutrality in education, the Church claimed.
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)
