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
Jewish school may severely restrict families’ IT use, says DfE
Posted: Mon, 19 Aug 2019 15:21
The government has said it will not prevent an independent Jewish girls' school from placing severe restrictions on families' IT use after the National Secular Society raised concerns.
The IT policy at Beis Chinuch Lebonos School in north London allows governors to monitor parents' smartphone usage and bans children from using or holding smartphones at home.
The NSS wrote to the Department for Education last month and questioned whether the school was breaching its duty to prepare children for life in British society.
The DfE has now told the NSS the restrictions the school places on families' behaviour are "a contractual issue and not one in which the department can intervene".
The school's IT policy:
- Discourages parents from using smartphones at all
- Tells parents who need smartphones they must block browsers and open any apps they need for business purposes "through the school office"
- Tells parents the governors may require them to install the 'Covenant Eye' app on their device as "an extra precaution" if they request "long or questionable" lists of apps
- Requires the school's technology department to approve any internet enabled devices at home
- Says children "may never hold any type of smartphone in their hands", may not have access to internet enabled devices at home and may never text
- Tells parents they must take precautions to ensure children cannot access wi-fi codes – "including, but not limited to, physically removing the label from the router"
- Tells parents they must never share "clips, pictures etc that they have received on screen" with their children and says children may only watch pre-approved DVDs.
The NSS's education spokesperson Alastair Lichten wrote to Theodore Agnew, the minister responsible for faith schools, to raise the case last month.
Mr Lichten wrote that the policy "seriously undermines pupils' access to information, opportunities to develop safe IT skills and ability to engage in personal expression and exploration". He also asked the government what action it would be taking.
In response a DfE spokesperson said the department did not agree that the school was breaching the standards placed on independent schools.
"The independent school standards relate to provision made by the school and do not seek to regulate the relationship between schools and parents – except in requiring schools to supply certain information to parents and to deal in a specified way with complaints.
"In any event, nothing in the standards requires access to the internet in any form either at school or in the home, to meet those standards."
Mr Lichten said the government's response was "unacceptable".
"The IT policy at Beis Chinuch Lebonos School places severe restrictions on the religious freedom of girls and their families. The government should be doing everything it reasonably can to resist this control freakery. But unfortunately it appears to have washed its hands of any requirement to hold the school to account for it.
"This is only the latest demonstration of the brazenly authoritarian attempts by a number of Orthodox Jewish schools to control the lives of their pupils and pupils' families. Ministers must make clear that schools exist to open opportunities for their pupils, not to shut them off, and certainly do not have the right to create insular communities in which families' private lives are severely restricted."
Several Jewish schools have placed draconian restrictions on families' private lives in recent years.
Last year the Office of Schools Adjudicator ruled that several Jewish state schools could place religious restrictions on children's families provided they were clearly explained.
And in 2015 two orthodox Jewish schools said they would ban children from attending school if they were dropped off by their mothers in 2015.
Mr Lichten raised these cases in his letter and asked the government to review the OSA's remit.
Beis Chinuch Lebonos was told it was failing to meet the independent school standards in an inspection by the education watchdog Ofsted in March. Ofsted said the school was failing to promote regard for all groups of people with protected characteristics under equalities legislation.
Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay.
End religious appointees on Scottish education committees, NSS says
Posted: Fri, 16 Aug 2019 08:13
The National Secular Society has urged members of the Scottish parliament to remove religious appointees from councils' education committees in a major report on the topic.
The NSS's report, Religious Reps: unrepresentative, unnecessary and unjustified, argues that reserving a special role in policy making for representatives of religious institutions runs counter to democratic principles.
The report also reveals that eight of Scotland's 32 councils are willing to consider revoking voting privileges from the representatives, after another council removed them earlier this year.
The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 requires local authorities in Scotland to appoint three religious representatives to their education committees. At least one of them must be appointed by the Catholic Church and one by the Protestant Church of Scotland.
The NSS's report calls for legislative change to remove the religious representatives' positions. It argues that religious representatives should be able to "feed their views in through the normal civic/ democratic process", but their views should "not be given any special or institutional weight".
"If Scotland is to be a country where all citizens irrespective of background have an equal chance to participate in decision making, then it can't give one select group a privileged role.
"Reserving a special role in policy making for representatives of specific religious institutions, and in so doing automatically excluding the majority of Scottish citizens based on their protected characteristics of religion and belief, clearly runs counter to principles of equality."
The Scottish government has previously rejected NSS lobbying to remove the religious representatives.
The NSS's report says in the absence of political will in the Scottish parliament for such change, local councils should act to restrict religious appointees' roles.
In April Perth and Kinross Council voted to end religious representatives' voting privileges after the Scottish government said there was no legal obligation to grant these rights.
The NSS has since written to all 32 councils in Scotland to ask them to follow suit. Edinburgh City Council is set to consider revoking the voting privileges next Thursday (22 August). Responses to the NSS's letter show that several other councils could reconsider the rights.
Several other councils have indicated a willingness to consider revoking the privileges, with East Ayrshire Council currently consulting with organisations which appoint unelected members over the idea.
Shetland, Highlands and Dumfries and Galloway councils may all consider voting privileges in their current governance reviews. Councils in Fife, the Scottish Borders and West Lothian have all indicated they could be considered in future governance reviews.
The NSS is sending the report to all MSPs and councillors on Scotland's 32 local authorities.
NSS education campaigner Alastair Lichten said: "The law requiring the appointment of religious representatives to education committees gives religion undue influence over the education of Scottish children and undermines efforts to make Scotland more democratic and equal. The Scottish government should repeal it as soon as feasibly possible.
"In the meantime councillors across Scotland can limit the influence of this undemocratic law by voting to remove religious appointees' voting rights and reforming their positions. It's encouraging to see that some councils are considering this and we urge others to follow suit."
The report has been endorsed by the Edinburgh Secular Society (ESS) and the Scottish Secular Society (SSS), who led petitions on the subject at the Scottish Parliament in 2013 and 2016 respectively.
Neil Barber of the ESS said: "Churches have not owned our schools since 1872. That there remain these unchallenged religious privileges in education is tantamount to selling a house but retaining a back door key."
He added that it was "absurd" to suggest faith groups brought "a politically neutral wisdom to the table".
Professor Paul Braterman of the SSS said: "This century-old arrangement was originally put in place to protect the interests of the churches whose schools were being merged into the national system. But surely, now, we can agree that the only interests that matter are those of the children, and the wider community of which they are part."
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)
