NSS demands repeal of legislation discriminating against non-religious teachers
The National Secular Society (NSS) has accused the Government of institutionalising religious discrimination against teachers in faith schools at a high profile education conference at Windsor Castle.
The conference, “Faith Schools: Freedom of Choice or Recipe for Division?” organised by the College of St George at Windsor Castle, heard Keith Porteous Wood, Executive Director of the NSS, accuse the Government of having given in to Church demands for the right to discriminate against teachers who are non-religious, or who are of the ‘wrong’ religion, in faith schools.
Mr Porteous Wood told the conference of religious leaders and education officials that in 2006 - without consulting the largest teaching union - the Government introduced excessive religious discrimination into the Schools Standards and Framework Act. They did this at the direct bidding of bishops in the House of Lords.
Before the conference, Mr Porteous Wood said: “I will use my speech to call for the repeal of the Sections 58 and 60 of the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998 and its Scottish equivalent.
We are calling for
- The legislation throughout Britain permitting discrimination against non-religious teachers in faith schools to be repealed.
- An independent commission of enquiry of Human Rights experts to look into the discrimination against the non-religious – whether as parents, children and school staff in British schools.
- The transitional provisions referred to below be introduced
- An investigation into religious teaching certificates to see whether they are being used as a backdoor way of excluding non-religious candidates.
Often – particularly in rural areas - faith schools are the only ones within commuting distance, so denying employment to any section of the population has real impact. And after 150 years of decline in church attendance, only around one in twenty of those of working age are in church on a normal Sunday. That means the one gets preference for the job over the other 19, even if they are better qualified as teachers. We do not accept that you need to be religious to teach any subject, and have no problem with teachers in faith schools being required to support the school’s ethos.
The Act even allows teachers to be sacked for conduct “incompatible with the precepts” of the religion, whether at or away from school. So in Sheffield recently a head teacher had to leave a Catholic school for an estranged wife to marry a long-term partner. Some pupils were inconsolable at his departure and a parent accused the Church of living in the “dark ages”.
In 2006 the NSS fought unsuccessfully in Parliament to stop an extension of discrimination under the Act. The amendment made it possible to require head teachers of Voluntary Controlled faith schools (those controlled by the local authorities) to be religious. Our calls for transitional provisions to help the thousands who career paths had been ruined were refused. The churches do not pay a penny of the salaries of these staff.
There are similar problems in Scotland with Catholic schools where an atheist David McNab won a tribunal hearing against not being interviewed for a job as Principal Teacher of Pastoral Care. Glasgow City Council appealed, unsuccessfully, against this and was berated by the Appeal tribunal for effectively acting as a department of the RC Church.
That ratio of 1:20 rises to over 1:150 by 2050 according to Christian Research – so the legislation is become more discriminatory with every year that passes.