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 urges Scottish Government to tackle governance failures concerning religion in schools
Posted: Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:21
The National Secular Society has highlighted failures in the governance of Scottish schools, identifying a string of incidents where pupils have been exposed in schools to extreme religious views.
In response to the Scottish Government's consultation on "excellence and equity in education", the Society pointed to examples where pupils had been taught creationism in schools, and where guest speakers with fundamentalist views and no scientific qualification had visited students to discuss sexual health.
The St Andrews Academy in Paisley invited religious extremist Pam Stenzel to address 150 pupils on sexual health. The Society pointed out in its response that "Stenzel has no formal training in medicine, public health, any other area of health science, or education." She has claimed that people who have more than one sexual partner in their lifetime "must pay a price".
Stenzel directly contravened Scottish Government educational guidelines with "words selected to confer deniability" that condoms were ineffective for disease prevention.
The Society drew the Scottish Government's attention to the fact that Christian outreach workers were active in non-denominational schools, often in an unclear capacity and offering advice to teachers on religious observance without clarity about what entitled them to lead assemblies and sit on school boards.
NSS vice president and spokesperson for Scotland Alistair McBay said:
"If this is already happening in Scotland's non-denominational schools under the present system of governance, what are the implications for a revised system with more powers taken away from local councils and given to headteachers?"
A Church of Scotland parish newsletter wrote of one Christian outreach worker that he is "involved in both local primary schools, developing good relationships with head teachers, teachers and children", "leading SU groups, doing assemblies, being on the school board, doing some RE classes and giving advice to teachers on religious observance." The outreach worker "spends about one day a week in each of the two local primary schools", including a non-denominational school.
Mr McBay added:
"This relates to non-denominational primary schools in Inverness and demonstrates how Christian organisations have been able to penetrate the school governance system for their own advantage. It begs several questions."
In the consultation response the Society questioned whether such individuals were PVG checked, what qualifications these workers needed, and what qualifies such an individual to advise Highland Council teachers on RO, take RE classes, run assemblies or give advice to teachers on religious observance.
The Society asked how the delivery and content of this worker's lessons on RME and sessions of religious observance were assessed and monitored by Highland Council.
Mr McBay said this and other governance failures at both Catholic and non-denominational (in many cases effectively 'Protestant') schools highlighted in the NSS submission suggested a serious failure in organisations which the Scottish Government considered already to be key strategic partners in education delivery – casting doubt on planned reforms.
Further devolution of power to headteachers could lead to many more such abuses, the Society said, where a headteacher's evangelism of a personal faith might cloud professional judgement as in the examples raised by the Society in its response to the consultation. Because of these lapses, education partnership structures had to be properly evaluated and inspected, the Society said.
Additionally, calls from religious organisations for separate inspections regimes should be resisted, or else the Scottish Government would jeopardise effective science teaching and sex and personal relationship education.
The NSS submission also called for an end to church-appointees to Local Authority Education Committees. At present, Scottish law requires Local Authority Education Committees to include Church nominees. Church appointees are immune from electoral scrutiny, do not have to declare their outside interests and hold the balance of power on 19 of Scotland's 32 Education Committees.
The NSS submission said:
"Affording a particular section of society an appointed privileged position within the decision-making process of local government, based solely on their personal religious beliefs, is profoundly and inherently undemocratic, unfair and discriminatory."
The Society also urged the Government to remember that "successful outcomes are in no way dependent on the existence and promotion of any particular 'religious ethos' since there are many high performing schools who manage to achieve successful outcomes and a community spirit without such."
The submission also called for a move away from denomination schooling, urging the Scottish Government to do everything it can to ensure that children of all faiths and none are educated together in inclusive schools.
"Government policy should seek to break down barriers, not erect them", said the NSS.
Government refuses to review discrimination against teachers in faith schools
Posted: Thu, 15 Dec 2016 11:07
The National Secular Society has criticised the Government for refusing to accept a recommendation from the Equality and Human Rights Commission to review the law which permits faith schools to discriminate against teachers on religious grounds.
In a recent report on the law regarding religion and belief in the workplace, the EHRC called for the appointment of teachers by faith schools to be "modelled on the current occupational requirement exception set out in the Equality Act", meaning a genuine occupational requirement would be needed before a school could discriminate when hiring staff.
The EHRC said a change in the law was necessary to ensure occupational requirements were genuine and that "teachers are able to pursue their careers without unjustifiable limitations being placed upon them".
Exemptions to the Equality Act permit some faith schools to apply a religious test in appointing, remunerating and promoting all teachers, including head teachers. In Voluntary Controlled faith schools the religious test can only be applied to one fifth of positions – including the headteacher – which are classified as 'reserved'.
These provisions also give the governors of some faith schools the right to discipline and dismiss teachers for any conduct, including private conduct outside the school, which they deem to be "incompatible with the precepts, or with the upholding of the tenets, of the religion of the school".
In December this year a popular head teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Hampshire was forced out of his job because he is divorced and remarried.
However, in a response to a parliamentary question tabled by NSS honorary associate Graham Allen MP, the Government said it was "important that faith schools are able to maintain their particular religious ethos and deliver the form of education which they have historically provided and which parents value."
Schools Minister Nick Gibb said: "Employment, equality and human rights law applies to the employment practices of all schools, and they must act reasonably and proportionately." He said the Government was not aware of any "firm evidence that schools are acting outside of this framework and have not been alerted to any alleged faith-discrimination cases from members of the school workforce."
Mr Allen's question had asked the Secretary of State for Education what steps she was planning to obtain independent legal advice to establish whether sections 60 (4) and (5) of the School Standards Framework Act comply with the EU Employment Equality Directive Article 4 (2) and that the exceptions be legitimate and proportionate, following the concerns expressed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The National Secular Society has long argued that UK legislation relating to state funded faith schools licenses discrimination against teachers not of the faith of the school and breaches European employment laws in relation to discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief. A legal academic advising the EHRC and the European Commission and the Society's own legal advice maintain the SSFA is in breach of the European Directive.
In 2014 the European Commission announced it would take no further action against the UK Government after investigating complaints, submitted by the National Secular Society over employment discrimination in faith schools – a move described as "political" by the NSS.
Stephen Evans, NSS campaigns director said; "the Government's intransigence on this issue shows an alarming indifference to the plight of the increasing proportion of non-religious teachers who the law allows to be kept out of faith schools, and also to those left vulnerable to dismissal simply because religious bodies consider them to be 'sinners'.
"If the Government expects publicly funded faith schools to act reasonably and proportionately in their employment practices then it should ensure this requirement is written into the law. At present many faith schools appear to have unfettered freedoms to unfairly discriminate on both religious and other grounds, such as sex or sexual orientation. We urge the Government to amend the law to clarify that faith schools are only permitted to discriminate where a genuine occupational requirement can be demonstrated."
A recent Catholic School Census published by the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales (CES) shows that 41.9% of teachers in English Catholic faith schools are practising Catholics, despite just 8.7% of them being required to teach Religious Education.
In Catholic primary schools 62.3% of teachers at Catholic, with 64.51% of them teaching RE.
In total, 51% of the 48,745 teachers working in England's 2,142 Catholic state-funded schools are Catholic.
Only a little over 1% of the British population attend a Catholic church on a normal Sunday.
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)
