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
Right of withdrawal from sex education will continue, says Hinds
Posted: Wed, 21 Feb 2018 17:46
Parents will continue to have the right to withdraw their children from sex education at secondary school, the education secretary has confirmed.
Damian Hinds's comments come as the teaching of Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) are due to become compulsory in England.
Relationships education will be taught at primary school and full RSE will be taught at secondary school. This weekend Damian Hinds said parents would continue to have the right to withdraw their children from the sex education part of RSE at secondary school.
"There's an established right for parents to be able to withdraw their children from the sex education bits of relationships and sex education," he told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1. "That right exists and will continue."
The Government recently closed a consultation on changes to these subjects. In its response to the consultation, the National Secular Society welcomed the proposal to make RSE compulsory and said young people's access to RSE should not be restricted on religious grounds.
The NSS campaigns for faith-free sex and relationships education and opposes the 'right' to withdraw children from it on religious grounds.
This week it also emerged that councillors in North London had unanimously backed a motion that faith schools should be allowed to omit important aspects of sex education.
The motion, which was passed at a full meeting of Barnet Council in January, called on the Government to allow faith schools to teach sex education "in a manner consistent with their religious ethos". It says the Department of Education should "allow for this in its pending guidelines and to call on OFSTED inspectors to be sensitive and understanding of this when carrying out their inspections".
It also says the Council "very much recognises and values the diversity of faith schools within this Borough, notes the excellent achievements of many of them and would not wish to see these schools undermined".
Cllr Brian Gordon, who put forward the motion, said: "It is wrong, and I would say counter-productive, for faith schools to be penalised or marked down for failure to teach particular aspects of sex and sexuality that are counter to their religious ethos."
In January Cllr Gordon represented the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) as part of a delegation of Orthodox Jewish 'community leaders' who met with Sir Theodore Agnew, a minister at the Department for Education. The 'representatives' said there would be "no compromise" with requirements to teach children about gender and sexuality. He described the expectation for schools to teach about gender and personal relationships as "unprecedented external pressure under the grand pretext of community cohesion and diversity".
UOHC is an umbrella organisation of Charedi Jewish groups in London. One of its most recent activities has been to call for its members to boycott the J3 Jewish Community Centre in London due to its activities supporting LGBT+ Jews.
The NSS expressed disappointment over Mr Hinds's comments and criticised Barnet Council for siding with groups which put religious concerns above children's educational needs.
Alastair Lichten, the NSS's education and schools officer, said: "Getting Relationships and Sex Education on a statutory footing, so every child has access to age appropriate provision, was a major success. Unfortunately some faith groups are determined to undermine this.
"We should cut through the euphemistic language about 'teaching in accordance with their ethos'. These groups want schools to be able to pretend LBGT+ people don't exist. They want to be able to deny pupils information about contraceptives. Very often they just want to use the subject to promote narrow religious views, for example about gender roles, or just don't want to teach it at all – regardless of how unprepared this leaves pupils."
Image: © The People Speak!, via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]
Damning Ofsted report for school which teaches creation story as science
Posted: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 15:56
A small independent Christian primary school which teaches the Bible's creation story in science lessons has received a damning Ofsted report.
The education watchdog rated Kings Kids Christian School in New Cross, in south-east London, as 'inadequate' overall and in four out of five major categories. In the other – personal development, behaviour and welfare – it said the school 'requires improvement'.
Ofsted said the school had not met the independent school standards and its leaders had "not encouraged pupils' understanding of and respect for people with different faiths and cultures".
Since the new independent school standards came into effect in 2015 Ofsted has reported in a "stark" increase in independent faith schools failing inspections.
The report was particularly damning of the school's curriculum. It said the creation story was taught in science and there was "no evidence" of pupils learning scientific theories about the earth's origin. It said pupils did not study practical science or develop the skills to collect and evaluate scientific evidence.
It said pupils made insufficient progress in "humanities and social aspects of the curriculum" because "history and geography are taught solely through the stories of the bible or the history of the United States of America, in particular the lives of early American missionaries".
Inspectors were critical of the school's approach to several other subjects, especially physical education and technology. They also said the school's pupils referred to non-Christian gods as "false gods".
"Leaders have not ensured that they encourage respect for other people," the report said. "Pupils do not know enough about other faiths, cultures and different groups of people with the full range of protected characteristics. This means that pupils are not as well prepared for life in modern British society as they could be."
The school's website says it encourages children to develop '"Christ-like character" and "Jesus is to be in the centre of all learning". The school uses the "bible-based" Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) curriculum, which it says is partly designed to "introduce children to the biblical standards outlined in the Bible".
Kings Kids has 25 pupils aged between three and 11. At its previous inspection in 2014 it was rated 'good' overall and in every major category.
The report identified improvements required for the school to meet standards on: the quality of its education; the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils; the school premises; and its leadership and management.
It said leaders had begun to address some of the issues it raised, for example by acquiring resources on British history and geography. It said pupils knew about "the Government and institutions of Britain" and democracy.
The National Secular Society campaigns to expose and end the promotion of creationism in schools. In October the NSS urged the Government to investigate a state-funded Jewish school whose newly-updated visitors' guide insisted the world was 5,778 years old. In December the Society criticised a creationist organisation which was sending DVDs advocating 'intelligent design' to every secondary school in the UK.
Alastair Lichten, the NSS's education and schools officer, said: "A faith ethos is not a free pass for indoctrination and pseudoscience, which seriously undermine young people's educational rights and their potential. Education should be about opening doors for young people, not moulding them for life in a narrow religious community."
Kings Kids told News Shopper nobody was available to comment to the press during half-term.
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)
