Church Plans Even More “Faith School” Discrimination

Church of England bishops are proposing that non-teachers jobs in religious schools should be reserved for practitioners of the school’s religion.

In an amendment tabled in the House of Lords to the Education and Inspections Bill, the Bishops of Southwell and Peterborough are demanding the removal of the ban on discrimination in employment of non-teaching staff by reason of the staff’s “religious opinions or of [their] attending or omitting to attend religious worship”.

Keith Porteous Wood, the National Secular Society’s Executive Director said: “Read literally, the Church’s amendment would exempt catering, janitorial or secretarial staff from the current ban on discrimination. But the Church now claims its amendment was primarily aimed at exempting teaching assistants rather than catering staff, because an exemption for the latter would not satisfy the “genuine occupational requirement” criterion of the Employment Regulations. We think the Church’s across-the-board amendment would give the dangerously misleading impression to those unfamiliar with the Employment Regulations that discrimination against all non-teachers is fair game. Very few school staff will realise that this law needs to be read and interpreted in conjunction with Employment Regulations, which only give conceptual guidance. There is no reason why the Church could not have specified exactly which jobs it wished to exempt, rather than implying the exemption would apply to all non-teaching staff.”

Mr Porteous Wood added: “We totally oppose any exemptions from the ban on job discrimination, including one limited to classroom assistants. Even that would cause great hardship and could lead to substantial numbers of staff being sacked, simply because of their faith or lack of it. Many of the 7,000 schools are in rural areas where the schools are the largest employer for miles around. It is unfair and inequitable to discriminate in this way, especially as the salaries of these staff come entirely from public funds. There is no need for such staff to be religious, especially as all are contractually bound to follow the ethos of the school.

“We have never been convinced by the Church of England’s constant reassurances that their schools are ‘inclusive’ and, implicitly, equally welcoming to non-believers and people from other religions. So it comes as no surprise to us that they now want to use the full force of the law to enable them to discriminate with impunity against support staff who are not practising Christians. These staff are vulnerable and do not have ready access to legal advice.”