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 warns against discriminatory new Catholic school in Peterborough
Posted: Fri, 20 Dec 2019 10:04
The National Secular Society has urged Peterborough City Council not to approve plans to open a new discriminatory Catholic school in the east of the city.
The NSS has submitted evidence to Peterborough City Council calling on it to favour inclusive, secular alternative proposals to meet demand for local school places.
Proposed Catholic school: the details
A proposal to open a new voluntary aided Catholic school in the Hampton Water area was submitted to the council in November. Under this plan:
- The school will be allowed to select 80% of its pupils on a religious basis in its first year. It could potentially select up to 100% on that basis after that.
- The school will have an exclusively Catholic ethos which will "permeate all areas of the curriculum and underpin the school's work and objectives".
The proposal is in direct conflict with an alternative bid by a local academy chain to open a community ethos school at the same site.
If the city council rejects the faith school, the community ethos alternative would also be expected to open in September 2020.
NSS submission
The NSS's consultation response included a detailed critique of the faith school proposal and evidence in favour of the alternative.
The NSS's consultation response told the council:
- The school's "exclusive and all-encompassing religious ethos" would be "alienating and exclusionary for many families who do not share the school's faith".
- Qualifying statements in the proposal, which claims the school will "welcome children of all faiths and none", were "little more than platitudes".
The NSS also submitted a selection of comments from Peterborough residents who responded to a petition coordinated by the NSS's No More Faith Schools campaign.
These featured concerns about discrimination, the exclusivity of the school's religious ethos and the likelihood that children would have to travel further to school.
The coordinator of the NSS's No More Faith Schools campaign, Alastair Lichten, said Peterborough City Council should reject the "discriminatory, poorly reasoned and unsuitable proposal" to open a new voluntary aided faith school.
"The range of principled and practical arguments being made by local residents should carry more weight than the poorly made demands from the Catholic Church for the new school to be faith based."
Notes
- Voluntary aided (VA) faith schools act as their own admissions authority and are allowed to select up to 100% of their pupils on a religious basis.
- In VA faith schools 100% of running costs and 90%+ of the capital costs are paid by the state. In this case the local Catholic diocese's capital contribution comes from public funds, as the city council has an agreement with a major housing developer to provide the school building. The costs for this are being passed to initial house purchasers.
- VA faith schools are permitted to teach denominational religious education (inspected by the religious body that runs them, rather than Ofsted).
- VA faith schools can apply a religious test when hiring promoting or retaining any teacher (though in practice such discrimination is usually restricted to senior roles and RE teachers).
- Since 2010 the Catholic Education Service has refused government offers to fund the development of new Catholic academies because these would have a 50% cap on religious selection. Plans to allow up to 100% religious selection by funding voluntary aided schools instead were announced in May 2018.
Rule change may shut children out from non-faith schools in Surrey
Posted: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 14:02
The National Secular Society has urged Surrey County Council not to proceed with changes to admissions arrangements which would restrict some families' chances of sending their children to non-faith schools.
The council is proposing to add 10 schools, including eight Catholic faith schools, to a list of those which can be considered as 'nearest schools'.
The change will reduce families' ability to send children to the nearest available non-faith school and make children more likely to be sent to Catholic schools against their parents' wishes.
The council has already deferred its rule change in the case of one of the schools pending a consultation. The decision came after the NSS wrote to the council to highlight the cases of at least 10 families who could have been adversely affected.
And the NSS has now urged the council not to make the changes in response to its consultation.
The Catholic schools are currently excluded from the 'nearest schools' list because of the extent of discrimination in their admissions policies and because their exclusive ethos makes them unsuitable for many children.
Council defers decision as NSS supports affected families
The council was due to remove one of the schools, St Joseph's Catholic Primary School in the town of Epsom, in September 2020 and the rest a year later.
It has now decided not to remove St Joseph's Epsom from the list until at least September 2021, and to consult over the changes in the meantime.
That decision came after the NSS highlighted families who were likely to be adversely affected by the changes and an adjudicator ruled that the change rendered the school's admissions policy unclear.
The 10 families wished to have a fair chance of sending their children to Stamford Green Primary School, a school with a community ethos in the town of Epsom, next September. Their best opportunity will be for that school to be considered their nearest school.
This would not have happened if St Joseph's Catholic Primary School, which as a voluntary aided school is currently allowed to discriminate in up to 100% of its admissions, was considered their nearest school.
The council was proposing to change the status of St Joseph's because in recent years it had admitted a very small number of pupils under non-faith based criteria.
Seventeen local primary schools are oversubscribed and the council's proposed change would make some families very unlikely to secure places at Stamford Green.
NSS response
NSS head of education Alastair Lichten said: "Surrey County Council should reconsider these proposed changes, which would make it harder for families to send their children to non-faith schools.
"This case also highlights the wider trend of faith schools having an often indirect, but significant, negative impact on school choice for many families.
"Until ministers show a willingness to confront religious control of the education system, families will continue to face the possibility of religion being imposed on their children against their wishes, or being locked out of their local schools."
NSS research highlights faith-based restrictions on school choice
- In a groundbreaking recent report the NSS revealed that every year between 45,000 and 60,000 families in England apply for primary schools in areas with extreme restrictions on non-faith school choice.
- Recent NSS research also found that more than 20,000 children were sent to faith schools in England against the preferences of their parents in September.
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)
