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
Schools told to take account of pupils’ religious background in RSE
Posted: Wed, 26 Jun 2019 14:23
The government will require schools in England to take "the religious background of all pupils into account" during lessons about relationships and sex when they become compulsory next year.
In newly-published final guidance the Department for Education (DfE) has also said faith schools will have licence to teach "the distinctive faith perspective" on relationships.
Schools will also be given licence to decide how to ensure their teaching is "sensitive and age appropriate" and conduct "balanced debate" on "issues that are seen as contentious".
The guidance will require teaching in all schools to reflect equality law and says the DfE expects "all pupils to have been taught LGBT content at a timely point".
In accompanying comments the education secretary Damian Hinds said he "would strongly encourage schools to discuss with children in class that there are all sorts of different, strong and loving families, including families with same-sex parents, while they are at primary school".
In April the National Secular Society wrote to Hinds to urge him to reconsider the requirement to take pupils' "religious background" into account when teaching about relationships. The NSS's letter came amid an escalating religious campaign against LGBT-inclusive teaching.
Earlier this month the NSS highlighted a plan by ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools to avoid teaching about same-sex relationships by exploiting loopholes in DfE regulations.
The new guidance outlines expectations which will apply to schools when compulsory education about relationships, sex and health is extended to all schools in England from September 2020.
Relationships education will be required in primary schools, with relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory in all secondary schools and a new subject of health education compulsory in all state-funded schools.
The guidance gives parents the "right to request that their child be withdrawn" from "some or all" of sex education delivered in secondary schools as part of the RSE curriculum. This is in line with the government's draft guidance in February, when it resisted pressure from religious groups to extend parents' right to withdraw their children.
There remains no right to withdraw children from relationships education and there will be no right to withdraw from the new subject of health education.
There will be an automatic right to withdraw children from sex education delivered at primary school, other than in relevant sections of the science curriculum.
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said the guidance represented "a step forward" but left "too much wiggle room for faith groups".
"The introduction of compulsory education on relationships, sex and health in all schools is a significant decision which will benefit children, women, LGBT people and wider society. But as so often, religion is the elephant in the room and the government has been too reluctant to confront it.
"Requiring schools to take children's 'religious background' into account creates an unreasonable expectation that faith-based opposition to teaching about healthy relationships may be accommodated. This requirement should be removed to send a message that religious groups do not have a veto on education which is reasonably judged to be in the best interests of children and society.
"Giving faith schools licence to teach from a faith perspective is also a misguided decision. Our research has shown that religious groups intend to exploit loopholes in government guidance and undermine the rights of children to receive an education which prepares them for the world they will encounter."
In February the NSS highlighted the messages being promoted by Kate Godfrey-Faussett, a prominent member of the primarily Islamic-based group Stop RSE who secured a debate in parliament on the subject. The NSS found that she had encouraged Muslims to adopt a "psychological" or "mental health" response to same-sex attraction.
Last year the NSS also found that three-quarters of England's state-funded secondary faith schools were distorting education about sex and relationships by teaching about them through a religious lens. The society's Unsafe Sex Education report warned of the risks of allowing faith schools to teach about the topics through the tenets of their faith.
The guidance was published as MPs debated parents' involvement in teaching in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The debate was brought by Labour MP Roger Godsiff, who represents the Hall Green area of Birmingham and has expressed support for protesters who have opposed LGBT-inclusive teaching at schools in the city.
During the debate the minister for school standards Nick Gibb said schools should "consider whether aspects of their curriculum may be sensitive to the parents of their particular cohort" and "ensure that they have properly engaged them on this content".
Gibb also said "some people on both sides of the debate" were "exploiting the situation due to their own lack of tolerance for the other side".
NSS honorary associate and Labour MP Angela Eagle asked Gibb if he had given "almost an open invitation to these organisations that are already spreading disruption across the country to do even more of it".
Elsewhere in the debate Eagle made a heartfelt intervention, in which she said LGBT people "are not going to get back in the closet, or hide, or be ashamed of the way we are". She urged MPs to resist "this view that if somebody has a religious objection somehow there can be no debate about it".
Labour MP Stephen Doughty brought up Godfrey-Faussett's claim, reported by the NSS in February, that making RSE compulsory was part of a "totalitarian endeavour to indoctrinate our children in secular ideologies".
He also highlighted the fact that a group called Islamic RSE was making "wild and fanciful allegations" and encouraging parents to "infiltrate governing bodies or parent teacher associations". Last month NSS research revealed that Islamic RSE was promoting anti-LGBT, anti-sex and anti-contraceptive messages and encouraging sympathetic parents to get involved in school governance.
During the debate Godsiff claimed the "controversies" in Birmingham "could have been avoided" if schools had approached equality teaching "in different ways" and "taken the parents' concerns into account".
Several other MPs, including NSS honorary associate Lloyd Russell-Moyle of Labour, disagreed with him.
NSS honorary associate Tom Brake also asked what the government could do to "counter what appears to be an organised campaign".
NSS backs home school register to protect child rights
Posted: Fri, 21 Jun 2019 16:19
The National Secular Society has given its backing to a registration system for children who do not attend state-funded or registered independent schools, in a bid to tackle illegal faith schools and safeguard children's rights.
In a response to the government's 'Children not in school' consultation, the NSS stressed that all children's educational rights must be protected, irrespective of their religious background.
The consultation sought views on proposed legislation to establish a register maintained by local authorities of children not attending mainstream schools and duties on parents and the proprietors of certain educational settings.
The proposals would require the registration by local authorities of children who are home educated or for other reasons not registered at state-funded/registered independent schools.
The NSS said it was essential that local authorities can gather accurate information to enable them to exercise their statutory duties related to safeguarding children's welfare and ensuring they receive a suitable education.
It said registration was a "minimal imposition" in order to ensure elective home education (HME) is not used as a cover for unregistered and illegal religious schooling.
The NSS has for many years been at the forefront of raising awareness of the thousands of children kept out of mainstream schooling for religious reasons, who then end up in illegal, unregistered schools where they often receive only religious instruction.
At many unregulated faith schools, students are required to study religious texts, such as the Quran the Talmud and Torah, with secular studies such as Maths, English and science sidelined or not taught at all.
Pupils in unregistered Jewish yeshivas and Muslim madrasas are often schooled in squalid conditions with and a lack of safeguarding. Since 2014, more than 50 safeguarding alerts, including concerns of abuse or neglect, were raised at schools not registered with the government, according to the BBC.
Growing public concern over illegal schooling prompted the establishment Ofsted's unregistered schools team, which has identified more than 500 suspected illegal schools operating in England, educating thousands of pupils, over the past three years. A fifth (21%) were religious schools, including 36 Islamic, 18 Jewish and 12 Christian schools.
Earlier this year the NSS passed a file containing a number of known unregistered schools in the Stamford Hill area of London to the Department for Education.
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said: "Illegal faith schools are responsible for some of the most egregious infringements of children's human rights. It should be a matter of national embarrassment that so many children are being left to languish in illegal religious schools that leave pupils hopelessly unprepared for anything other than life in an insular religious community.
"All children should enjoy the right to a decent education that leaves them equipped for adult life and fully able to integrate themselves into society.
"We therefore welcome measures to help councils identify children in unregulated settings and intervene where necessary. Registration should not be seen as an expression of suspicion against families who choose to home educate, but an essential and routine mechanism for protecting children's rights."
Proposals for a compulsory register of home-schooled children are also being backed by Ofsted and the Children's Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield who has said was "vitally important that we know that all children are safe and that they are receiving the education they deserve to help them to succeed in life."
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)
