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
Swedish governing party plans to end religious 'free' schools
Posted: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:24
The governing party in Sweden will propose ending the role of publicly-funded religious 'free' schools in its manifesto for the country's autumn general election.
In a press release on Tuesday the Social Democratic Party said: "Religious influence has no home in Swedish schools. The Social Democrats want school to provide all children with a good education regardless of their background, gender or religion."
Sweden has over 70 religious schools. The majority of them are Christian, about 11 of them are Islamic and a handful of them are Jewish. Most of the country's schools are run by local authorities.
The Social Democrats' policy would apply to schools which are publicly funded and must follow government guidelines on the curriculum but otherwise operate independently.
The National Secular Society said the move should "remind politicians in the UK to take on the pro-faith schools lobby".
Alastair Lichten, the NSS's education and schools officer, said: "We often hear that it's too hard to take on religious interests in our education system, but this is a reminder that it's both desirable and possible to roll back their influence. Politicians in the UK should take note."
The NSS campaigns for an open and inclusive education system, including the phasing out of state-funded faith schools. Faith schools make up around a third of publicly-funded schools in England and Wales. Many Scottish and Northern Irish schools are divided along sectarian lines and religious officials have an automatic role on local authority education committees in Scotland.
Two of the Social Democrats' ministers presented the policy at a press conference on Tuesday.
Anna Ekström, the minister for upper secondary school and adult education, said: "For us it's clear that no student should be subjected to religious influence in school. To have faith or not should be every child's own choice."
Ardalan Shekarabi, the minister for public administration who grew up in Iran, said he did not intend to allow the "oppression which I and many others fled from to make its way into Swedish schools". He added on Twitter: "In Swedish schools it should be teachers and principals who govern, not priests and imams."
The two ministers said the move was partly designed to tackle increasing religious segregation in the country. In recent months in Sweden an Islamic headmaster who expressed a desire to live in a state governed by sharia 'law' has been allowed to open a new school, and the country's discrimination ombudsman has ruled that gender segregated sports lessons at an Islamic school were potentially discriminatory.
The announcement came two days after Sweden's education minister said the country would ban groups which do not support gender equality from starting or running schools.
In an article in a Swedish newspaper Gustav Fridolin wrote: "The regulatory framework will be tightened. Those who do not support fundamental values around equality and human rights should be stopped from running free schools in Sweden.
"No child should be exposed to direct or indirect compulsion to take part in religious activities in any school in Sweden. And all education should be completely free of religious influence."
In an accompanying interview he said the government - which the Social Democrats lead in a minority arrangement with the Greens - was not interested in bringing in a total ban on religious schools in Sweden.
The Social Democrats will also propose a new law testing the fitness of those who propose starting and running independent schools.
NSS: school which censored textbooks trying to hide from criticism
Posted: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 17:38
The National Secular Society has said a school which removed references to homosexuality from textbooks is "erroneously employing accusations of bigotry to hide from criticism".
Last week it was revealed that an orthodox Jewish girls' school in Stamford Hill had censored sections of GCSE textbooks. Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' school removed references to homosexuals from a section of a textbook about Nazi policies.
It also changed a number of images of women to hide their chests, shoulders, arms and legs above the knee. In a section on the position of women in modern American society, it removed references to women smoking, drinking and driving with men, along with the sentence: "They kissed in public."
The book was called Understanding the Modern World, one of the exam board AQA's GCSE history resources.
In response to the revelation a spokesman for the school claimed those criticising its conduct had "an anti-Jewish agenda".
"We are concerned that Ofsted continuously jumps to the tune of small pressure groups like the humanists [Humanists UK] and the National Secular Society that have a very clear anti-Jewish agenda.
"Their current noisy campaigns against circumcision, shechita [the method of slaughter used to produce kosher meat], Jewish schools, housing and respecting the dead make it clear that the humanists' idea of a modern Britain is one that is free of observant Jews."
The spokesman said the school's policies were designed to "protect our girls from sexualisation in line with our parents' wishes and religious beliefs".
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans called the school's reaction "appalling".
"The school appears to have no reasonable defence for censoring its textbooks in this way. Removing references to men mixing with women limits girls' horizons when education should empower them. And removing references to the persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust is particularly shocking.
"This school's response to the revelations about its own position is worryingly blasé. And its decision to throw out unfounded, incorrect accusations of bigotry appears to be an attempt to change the subject so it can hide from justified criticism."
The school's accusation came before the NSS had publicly commented on the episode, apart from by sending one factual tweet which described what had happened.
Yesodey Hatorah also faced complaints over censorship in 2013. The exam board OCR found that questions on evolution had been obscured in 52 papers in two GCSE science exams, meaning they could not be answered. The NSS had asked it to investigate reports that teachers had redacted questions.
At the time OCR said it did "not consider obscuring aspects of question papers to be good exam practice". It said it would raise the matter with the Department for Education, Ofsted and its fellow awarding bodies, and Ofqual was aware of the investigation and its outcome.
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)
