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: education secretary must keep faith-based admissions cap
Posted: Tue, 9 Jan 2018 08:06
The National Secular Society has urged the new education secretary Damian Hinds to drop plans to remove the 50% cap on religiously selective admissions to faith-based academies and free schools.
Damian Hinds replaces Justine Greening, who resigned as education secretary in Theresa May's cabinet reshuffle. It was understood that Greening opposed plans to drop the 50% cap, but Hinds is a proponent of religiously selective schools and in 2014 led a debate in Parliament where he advocated for the removal of any cap on faith-based admissions to Catholic schools.
In a letter Stephen Evans, the NSS chief executive, called on Mr Hinds to rethink his stance and consider not only the effect that the lifting of the cap would have on Catholic schools, but the way it would impact on all other faith schools, including minority faith schools.
He urged the new Secretary of State to "strike a blow for cohesion, equality and fairness" by abandoning plans to remove the cap.
"A further expansion of religiously selective faith schools is the antithesis of inclusive education," Mr Evans wrote. "Rather than facilitating segregation along religious lines, we would urge the Government to make every effort to ensure that children of all faiths and none are educated together in inclusive schools".
In 2016 the Government launched a consultation on proposals to create a wave of new faith-based schools and allow religious discrimination in 100% of new faith school admissions.
It has now been more than a year since the consultation closed, and the Government is yet to confirm whether it intends to proceed with the plans.
Groups such as the Catholic Education Service (CES) lobbied for the changes. The CES is refusing to open free schools because of the cap – arguing that canon law dictates that Catholic schools must give priority to children of Catholic parents.
In its letter to Mr Hinds the NSS said the proposals had "the potential to significantly increase religious discrimination and social and ethnic segregation within publicly funded schools". It said they would "allow more children to be schooled in a completely immersive religious environment, surrounded by pupils of the same faith and, in many cases, the same ethnic background". The "broad consensus", it added, was that the plans would harm social cohesion.
The Sutton Trust has warned that removal of the cap would be "likely to make [faith schools] even more unrepresentative of their local areas, reducing the number of good school places available to pupils across the socio- economic spectrum." The Education Policy Institute has warned that the policy is unlikely to increase social mobility, which is one of the supposed objectives behind it.
And Ofsted's chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has said "admission 100% on faith leads to increased levels of segregation within communities".
The NSS added that lifting the cap was inconsistent with the Department for Education's own guidance on 'promoting fundamental British values'. The guidance says it is "unacceptable" for schools to "promote discrimination against people or groups on the basis of their belief, opinion or background".
Mr Hinds was himself educated at St. Ambrose College, a Roman Catholic Grammar school which was the subject of the biggest historic sex abuse case ever mounted by Greater Manchester Police.
Also see:
NSS coverage of the debate Hinds led in 2014
Concerns over Catholic Church's 2014 donation to Damian Hinds (The Guardian)
Image: Damian Hinds, © Chris McAndrew / UK Parliament [CC BY 3.0]
Faith ethos loophole risks undermining sex education, NSS warns
Posted: Tue, 19 Dec 2017 15:16
The Department for Education has launched a consultation on new sex education guidance which will allow schools to teach the subject from a religious perspective.
The National Secular Society is urging supporters to respond to the consultation, which will be led by the former head of a Church of England comprehensive school.
The Government has been committed to issuing guidance on making relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory in all English state schools since the Children and Social Work Act passed in April 2017. Today, writing in TES, education secretary Justine Greening said she wanted to make RSE "relevant to life in modern Britain".
The NSS, which is a member of the Sex Education Forum, has long advocated for age-appropriate comprehensive sex education in schools. The Government came under increasing pressure on the issue throughout 2016/17, including from the UN children's rights Committee, backbenchers and multiple select committees. A former solicitor general also argued that comprehensive sex education was crucial to tackling "endemic sexual exploitation".
But in a statement last week the Government said faith schools should be able to teach RSE in accordance with "the tenets of their faith". It said it was "committed to ensuring the education provided to pupils in Relationships Education and RSE is appropriate to the age of pupils and their religious background". It added that faith schools should still be "consistent with the requirements of the Equality Act".
In July, more than 50 faith leaders signed a letter in the Guardian warning of the consequences of "open-ended and undefined" language about faith schools teaching RSE from their faith perspective. They said the subject could be "hijacked by those who wish to overlook topics such as accessing confidential sexual and reproductive healthcare services and contraception, as well as those who wish to limit pupils to what they consider to be religiously acceptable notions of gender and sexual orientation".
The consultation will be led by Ian Bauckham, the former head of Bennett Memorial Diocesan School (BMDS) in Kent. BMDS is a selective Church of England school which teaches "that each and every one of our students was created by God for a special purpose". Its relationships and sex education policy stresses "religious perspectives" on contraception, relationships and marriage.
The guidance will retain the right for parental withdraw from sex education lessons. The NSS has previously said this "undermines the right of the child" and called it "a betrayal of the pupils attending religious schools".
The NSS's education and schools officer, Alastair Lichten, said: "We welcome the education secretary's optimism and that the Government is finally moving forward on reforming RSE provision. The law is non-prescriptive so the extent to which faith schools can bias the subject will be largely dependent on the guidance now under consultation.
"Where RSE is taught though a 'faith ethos', it is not unusual for us to hear from parents and pupils of schools using the subject to promote marital submission, anti-abortion misinformation, abstinence-only and anti-LGBT+ views.
"It is not enough for the Government to offer their 'hopes' and 'expectations'. They have the power to ensure all RSE covers LGBT+ issues, consent and accurate information about contraceptives and reproductive health.
"We urge supporters to respond to the consultation, to ensure religious dogma doesn't trump children's rights in education."
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)
