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.
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1. Write to your MP
Please call on your MP to support a secular, inclusive education system for all.
2. Share your story
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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 criticises move to entrench faith school protections in law
Posted: Wed, 25 May 2022 15:02
The National Secular Society has criticised a move to enshrine protections for the ethos of faith schools into law as a missed opportunity for child rights.
The Schools Bill will put into law that religious institutions in England must have a "clearly defined role" in the running of schools with a religious character if they become academies.
At present these protections only exist in the funding agreements for academies and not in primary legislation. Religious institutions which control faith schools have complained these "weaker arrangements" hold back some faith schools from converting to academies.
There are no plans for equivalent laws to protect the secular, community ethos of academies without a religious character.
The Schools Bill will also ensure faith schools which become academies provide religious education (RE) and collective worship "in accordance with the tenets and practices" of their religion.
The NSS is campaigning for reform of RE so that it is broad, balanced and objective in all schools, and to abolish laws requiring daily acts of collective worship. The United Nations have recommended the UK repeal its laws requiring collective worship in all state schools.
But the government has said that a change in law on collective worship is "unnecessary", adding that collective worship "encourages pupils to reflect on the concept of belief".
Bishops' bench "very grateful" for faith school protections
During the bill's second reading in the House of Lords on Monday, Paul Butler and Steven Croft (pictured), who sit in the Lords as of right as Anglican bishops, welcomed the move.
Butler said the provisions set out how the "settlement between Church and state continues" and said the Church of England was "very grateful" for the way in which ministers have engaged with the Church so that "areas of policy with specific relevance to the future of schools on sites that have been provided by the Churches are addressed".
But other peers spoke out in favour of more inclusive education. Baroness Joan Bakewell highlighted the difficulties faced by nonreligious parents who have no option but to send their children to faith schools. She said the right of withdrawal from RE and collective worship is "demeaning and discriminatory, and often results in children languishing aimlessly in empty classrooms", and said the situation "needs to be challenged".
Baroness Molly Meacher said: "I hope this House can ensure that the content of religious education and worship in all schools reflects the full ambit of freedom of religion and belief and that a pluralistic and critical approach is adopted".
Cracking down on unregistered schools
The NSS has welcomed a separate provision in the Schools Bill which will give authorities greater powers to tackle illegal unregistered schools – something the NSS has long lobbied for.
Peers also welcomed the bill. Baroness Meacher said: "We know that the education provided in many unregistered religious schools is narrow in scope, predominantly scriptural in content and deeply conservative, intolerant and extreme in outlook.
"Because these schools have been able to evade inspections, bad practices of all kinds appear to have developed. Former pupils of such illegal settings told an all-party parliamentary group in December of the physical, emotional and sexual abuse they had suffered. They also talked of the narrow religious curriculum, with no English, maths or science in their school experience".
NSS comment
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said: "We very much welcome the measures to tackle unregistered religious schools. We look forward to working with the government through the bill's passage to ensure the legislation is robust enough to put an end to children being systematically undereducated in unsafe illegal schools.
"But the decision to freshly legislate for collective worship and faith-based RE is alarming.
"In its last periodic examination of the UK's human rights record, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child asked what steps the government was taking to repeal such laws, but here they are further entrenching them in statute. Meanwhile, there are no such protections for the secular ethos of community schools.
"Any new bill to raise education standards should also raise human rights standards by removing archaic requirements for children to take part in religious worship."
The NSS has met with Department for Education to discuss their concerns with the bill.
Faith school cancels children’s author talk over ‘witchcraft’ fears
Posted: Mon, 23 May 2022 14:20
A faith school has reportedly cancelled a visit from a children's author because it feared his books would 'promote witchcraft'.
Andy Sagar said on Twitter on Friday that his first school event in London had been called off because the school "didn't want to be seen to be 'promoting witchcraft'".
Sagar's debut children's book 'Yesterday Crumb and the Storm in a Teacup' (pictured) was published in March and features a magical teashop run by a witch. Last month the Sunday Times named the novel Children's Book of the Week.
The Sun reported that the school in question is a faith school.
Sagar, who previously worked as a teaching assistant in a primary school, is pursuing a PhD on the role of law in historical witch-hunts, which inspired his fiction.
Just this March, Southwark Diocese forced two Catholic schools to cancel a talk by children's author Simon James Green because his books feature gay characters.
GP Taylor: 'The need for secularisation'
Several Twitter users responded to Sagar's tweet with their own experiences of books featuring witches being banned in UK schools.
Fellow children's author and ordained Anglican vicar GP Taylor said his books, which feature magic but are inspired by Christianity, had been locked in the safe of one school after an evangelical parent complained they were "evil".
He said: "As a Christian heavily influenced by paganism I was very shocked that a number of schools excluded my books from their libraries as they had pagan content".
He added that these schools were usually 'church schools' and said this indicated the need to secularise the school system.
Twitter user Jacqueline Harris said at her first teaching practice she experienced a similar issue when the school decided to ban all books with mention of witches.
She said: "They had trouble when they found the maths scheme had counting cauldrons and witches hats!"
NSS comments
NSS head of policy and research Megan Manson said: "Schools banning children's authors because of concerns their fantasy books promote witchcraft shows that deference to religious taboos is getting out of control in our education system.
"We are particularly concerned that the religious institutions behind faith schools may put school leaders under pressure to reject texts, however innocuous, that could be perceived to contravene the ethos of the school.
"The Department for Education needs to show some leadership and support schools to expose children to a wide variety of books without fear of religious censorship.
"These incidents also show increasingly incongruity of state-funded faith schools in modern British society."
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)
