Supporters' comments

"Schools are for education not indoctrination. Schools should help people understand each other, not drive them apart or discriminate against some children on the basis of religion. No discrimination and no proselytizing would be a good manifesto pledge."

"RE should be descriptive and not normative. That is, our children should be educated in the belief structures and ethical approaches of the major religions, without being taught that any one of them is actually true. The teaching should include humanism. To allow local organisations, or even schools, to dictate religious teaching will literally foster parochialism. It will invite religious segregation and ignorance of other religious and non-religious people."

"Partisan religion has no role in education. If it must be taught it should be in a manner that indicates the variety and plurality of belief and non-belief."

"No school - especially those receiving funding from the state - should be permitted to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint and the law should reflect this."

"National Curriculum should include study of diverse belief systems, philosophy, critical thinking - replacing partisan religious education."

"My child has been taught Christian doctrine as fact in RE. He was 5 years old and at a community school. It is especially important that RE subject leaders and teachers, often interested in the subject because of their own faith, understand - very clearly - that it is not an opportunity to invite others to share their faith."

"I've already excused my children from GCSE RE because the RE teachers at my kids' school consistently set work presupposing a belief in God and invite Evangelical locals to the school to teach literal interpretations of the Bible. This has to stop."

"I'm a lead RE teacher and a member of a SACRE. I can see that provision for the subject varies widely nationally and that faith groups have vested interests in forms of RE that are not broad and balanced. The ability for parents to withdraw their children is detrimental to the subject, but necessary while faith groups can be allowed to teach a biased curriculum."