21st Century RE for All
We want every pupil to have the same entitlement to high quality, non-partisan education about religion and belief. We want to see all schools preparing young people for life in modern Britain by teaching pupils about the diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews.
We're campaigning for an end to the arbitrariness and unfairness of local determination in Religious Education and for a national religion and belief education syllabus as part of the National Curriculum.
What’s the problem?
Religious education is out of date and in need of reform. Almost thirty years after the introduction of a national curricular entitlement for all pupils, one subject remains exempt – religious education. Unlike any other compulsory subject RE is determined at a local level.
In each local authority the local agreed syllabus for religious education (RE) is determined by 'Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education' (SACREs), largely made up of religious representatives, with non-religious representatives either excluded or barred from voting.
Even worse, many faith schools don't even need to follow the locally agreed syllabus, and can instead teach their own syllabus and teach religion from their own exclusive viewpoint.
If there is a body of knowledge called 'Religious Education', which is worthy of being taught at all, it should be offered to all children wherever they live. There are simply no grounds for discriminating on grounds of geographic location or school type. If a programme of study covering religion and belief deserves to be included in the school curriculum, it should be offered to all as a basic entitlement for every future citizen. This is simply a matter of fundamental justice and equality.
Importantly, the subject must be broad, balanced and inclusive. Religious interest groups should no longer determine what gets taught. As with other subjects, the syllabus should be nationally determined by independent educationalists without an agenda motivated by a specific religion or belief.
"The structures that underpin the local determination of the RE curriculum have failed to keep pace with changes in the wider educational world. As a result, many local authorities are struggling to fulfil their responsibility to promote high-quality religious education"
OFSTED report 'Religious Education: Realising the Potential'
Get involved
With the General Election coming up, as a nation we're thinking about our future. Please consider asking your candidate to support common sense secular reforms — such as reforming religion and belief education — that will make our society, education system, and laws fairer for all.
It’s time to take religious education in schools out of the hands of religious councils. Support a national entitlement to high quality, non-partisan education about religion and belief.
Sign the petition-
A selection of comments from the petition. Supporters on what this campaign means to them and the need to reform religion and belief education.
Find out more
NSS submission to the Commission on Religious Education
We’ve called on the Commission to support pupils’ basic entitlement to non-partisan education about religion and belief, and an end to RE controlled by religious groups or faith schools.
Religious Education and the law
RE is a statutory part of the basic curriculum in all schools, but is often shaped by local religious groups and faith schools.
Your rights: Withdrawal from RE and Collective Worship
We advocate comprehensive non-partisan reform of religion and belief education and an end to compulsory worship in schools, so no one has to withdraw from any part of the school day.
Why Religious Education must be reformed before ending parental opt-out
The right to withdraw from RE may sometimes be problematic, but is still necessary when until vestiges of confessionalism, proselytization and poor practice remain.
Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education
Dominated by religious representatives, SACREs determine the RE syllabus at a local level.
Related news and opinion
Framing religion as intrinsically positive harms education, study warns
Posted: Wed, 5 Dec 2018 10:49
"Well-intentioned" religious education teachers are undermining the subject by framing religion as intrinsically positive and glossing over its negative side, academics have warned.
In an article in the journal Religions David Smith, Graeme Nixon and Jo Pearce warned that knowledge was being distorted as teachers attempted to use RE primarily to combat prejudice.
A survey of 465 RE teachers found that 60% "absolutely agree" that "religion should be taught in a positive way in RE". Six per cent did not agree, with the remainder "moderately" (16%), "somewhat" (13%) or "slightly" (five per cent) agreeing.
The authors said some teachers were framing positive manifestations as "true" religion and negative manifestations as "false" or "distorted", meaning respect could be given "prominence over understanding".
There were significant variations between RE teachers who identify as theists and others – who were about equally balanced - between those who taught religion as inherently positive and those who did not.
When invited to give further detail, the teachers frequently stressed the importance of presenting positive manifestations of religion as more authentic, in order to "counteract prejudices".
One teacher said: "We teach general tolerance to all people, of all religions and that all religions teach peace, love and compassion, with the odd exception where there may be extremists who misinterpret their holy books, but that they exist within all religions and that they are not true followers."
Another teacher warned: "It seems that most RE teachers and resources tend to pick the nice bits and shy away from some controversies, especially in primary schools and faith schools. Children are guided towards a biased understanding of religion."
When the authors codified these qualitative responses, they found 35% of teachers advocated teaching both a positive and negative view of religion. Twenty-two per cent advocated a purely positive view; 19% a critical one; 15% an objective one; and nine per cent an essentialised one.
But even where respondents stressed the importance of critical accounts, their written responses often framed this as a critical examination of the positives of 'real' religion and the negatives of 'distorted' religion.
The authors said framing religion as intrinsically good or bad undermines religious literacy in both education and public dialogue.
"Both negative and positive essentialist conceptualisations of religion exist. In light of the strand of cultural discourse outlined above, our concern is with the latter.
"In seeking to essentialise religion and to proscribe it with a set of positive, pro-social, attributes, the self-understanding of some religious adherents is unjustifiably discounted — and religion is sanitised by being cleansed of any negative, anti-social, connotations."
The authors also warned of the risks of prioritising respect over understanding.
"If RE is principally conceptualised instrumentally as combating prejudice and fostering community cohesion, rather than as the pursuit of knowledge and understanding of religion, there is a risk that knowledge is selected to serve instrumental goals and is thereby distorted."
The authors recommended that RE teachers should "avoid giving narrative privilege to any particular denominations/sect/spokesperson". They added that teachers should consider avoiding "expressions, such as 'Hindus believe…' in favour of 'while some Hindus believe, others…' or 'the majority of Hindus believe… while a minority believe…'".
National Secular Society education and schools officer Alastair Lichten welcomed the report.
"These findings bring to light an often overlooked and unintended consequence of well-meaning efforts to promote balance and tolerance in religious education. Most of the RE community pay lip service to teaching the good and the bad and we often hear passionately about teaching the 'warts and all' of religion. However, while RE has (outside of faith schools) largely moved on from confessionalism, it is still treated by many as a rose-tinted advertising space for approved representatives of different beliefs.
"Over recent decades western societies have grappled with the twin phenomena of violence perpetrated by religious groups, and bigotry targeted against religious groups. The highest profile of these in Europe have been Islamist violence and anti-Muslim bigotry. Not wishing to legitimise such forces, RE teachers have been pressured to follow the lead of politicians who frame this violence as a 'distortion' of, or 'nothing to do with' religion. This leaves judges, politicians and commentators straying into the wilds of amateur theology and leaves teachers imposing taboos.
"The demagogue motivated by their faith to spew hatred and bigotry has just as much right to view their interpretation of religion as correct as the humanitarian motivated by that same faith to spread love and tolerance.
"To label one manifestation as the 'real' religion or 'correct' interpretation patronises students and leaves them with an impoverished understanding of the relationships between belief, identity and action. Education can and should tackle prejudice but whitewashing religion can stoke misunderstanding, resentment, bigotry and prejudice."
The NSS campaigns for children to have a national entitlement to high quality, non-partisan education which covers the diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews in a critically-informed way.
See also: How RE teachers see religion – and why it can be bad for pupils, by the authors
Let children make their own minds up about religion, says report
Posted: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 12:10
The National Secular Society has welcomed an academic report which calls on English state schools to raise children in a religiously neutral manner.
The report 'How to regulate faith schools', which will be launched at the UCL Institute of Education in London tonight, says schools should not be allowed to teach religion "directively".
The report calls for a ban on confessional religious instruction and acts of school-directed worship during school hours. It argues that schools should be allowed to have a faith ethos provided they do not guide their students "in their direction to such an extent that it threatens their autonomy".
The authors, from the University of Warwick and University College London, write that it is "important for individuals to decide for themselves what kind of life to live and to reflect and act upon those decisions in a well-informed manner".
"There should be no classes that encourage children to believe that they are duty-bound to worship God, that Jesus is the son of God whose crucifixion and resurrection redeemed mankind, that Allah is the one true God and only He is worthy of worship, or that there is no God and human beings can only find ethical and spiritual fulfilment without belief in a divinity."
The report adds that schools should introduce "a universal entitlement to an adequate programme of civic, religious, ethical and moral education", to be known as CREaM.
The proposed CREaM syllabus would "explicitly place religion alongside a broader education in citizenship, ethics and morality".
"Non-directive" religious education would be part of CREaM. Its purpose would be "to equip children with the understanding and capacity to decide for themselves what gods (if any) there are and what goals and relationships are worth pursuing".
The report calls for the 50% cap on faith-based admissions which currently applies to new faith schools to apply to all state-funded faith schools. Earlier this year the government decided not to lift the 50% cap after vigorous campaigning by the NSS and others.
The authors say independent faith schools should only retain their charitable status if they accept the same regulation as state-funded schools. Independent schools which engaged in religious instruction or operated an unrestricted faith-based admissions policy would lose their charitable status.
The report says parents should be required to register with their local authority if they wish to educate their children at home. Home educating parents would also be required to provide an education that "attends to the development of educational goods" and to teach the CREaM curriculum. They would be allowed to teach their children religion directively.
Alastair Lichten, the NSS's education and schools officer, said the proposals "are largely a welcome dose of common sense".
"Education should value individual autonomy and give children the tools they need to make informed decisions, including about religion. This report has recognised that and the proposals would certainly represent a welcome change if adopted.
"The state should put children's independent rights ahead of the interests of religious leaders. Ending collective worship and teaching about religion in an informed rather than a confessional manner would both strike major blows in favour of that. And the proposals for change beyond the state sector are sensible and balanced.
"While the report is practical and recognises where we are rather than a theoretical ideal, it doesn't shy away from challenging the entrenched interests of the faith school lobby. While the proposals to remove faith schools' special privileges would mitigate much of the harm they do, it's difficult to see what role they could really play in a truly religiously neutral education system."
The NSS has long campaigned for the end of compulsory worship in schools. Under the law state schools in England and Wales are required to ensure children take part in worship on a daily basis.
The NSS calls for reform of RE so children have a national entitlement to a broad, balanced education about religion and belief. Last month a major report by the Commission on Religious Education called for RE to be replaced by a subject entitled 'Religion and Worldviews'.
Mr Lichten said: "High quality education about worldviews (religious or otherwise) may well be best delivered as part of the proposed CREaM syllabus."
The NSS's No More Faith Schools campaign calls for the end of state-funded faith schools.
The report said the proposals were "grounded in a normative framework of basic values" and "explicitly" appealed to "philosophical principles".
"Some will doubtless regard our proposals as reflecting a secular worldview, suspecting us of being hostile to religious believers… But schools that do not direct children towards particular religions are not anti-religious, and antipathy towards religion plays no role in our thinking."
The report was written by Professor Adam Swift, of University College London, and University of Warwick academics Dr Ruth Wareham, Professor Matthew Clayton and Professor Andrew Mason. It has been published by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.
Replace RE with ‘religion and worldviews’, says commission
Posted: Sun, 9 Sep 2018 06:09
The National Secular Society has given a "qualified welcome" to a commission's recommendations to replace RE with a subject entitled 'Religion and Worldviews' and introduce a national entitlement to it.
In its report on the future of RE teaching the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) has said all publicly-funded schools should be required to teach the national entitlement. All pupils should be entitled to study it until the age of 16 (year 11) and post-16 students should have the opportunity to do so.
But the report recommended allowing Section 48 inspections, where religious bodies rather than Ofsted inspect the way RE is taught in faith schools, to continue. The NSS has said this recommendation gives too much leeway to religious interests.
The report said schools' programmes of study must "reflect the complex, diverse and plural nature of worldviews" and may "draw from a range of religious, philosophical, spiritual and other approaches to life". The report says if pupils encounter only religious and not non-religious worldviews, or smaller, local, indigenous or newer religions, their understanding of the subject is "impoverished".
It called for a review of the requirement for local authorities to draw up agreed syllabuses on religious education, a measure the NSS has long advocated.
But it recommended changing, rather than abolishing, the local authority bodies charged with drawing up the RE curriculum. The bodies, currently known as Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (SACREs), would become 'Local Advisory Networks for Religion and Worldviews'. The NSS has called for the abolition of SACREs.
The report said the Department for Education should provide legal clarification on whether the change in the subject's name would affect parents' right to withdraw their children from the subject.
It added that schools would be expected to publish a detailed statement about how they meet the national entitlement.
NSS chief executive Stephen Evans said the recommendations deserved "a qualified welcome".
"The introduction of a national entitlement to teaching about religion and worldviews is a positive step. If enacted these proposals would represent significant progress although the deference to religious interests has limited the commission's ambitions, making it an inevitable fudge.
"But if the government is prepared to listen then this report is a potential game changer for the way we teach about religion in schools. All children should have an education that enables them to develop their own independent and informed beliefs. Whilst the proposed national entitlement is welcome, a more fundamental review of religion's role in education is necessary to make this a reality and to challenge confessional teaching and undue religious influence in our state-funded schools."
On the recommended name of the new subject, Mr Evans said: "The inclusion of the word 'religion' appears to be a sop to religious interests – which could undermine efforts to reinvigorate and improve the reputation of this contentious are of the curriculum. Calling a subject 'Religion and Worldviews' is a bit like calling PE 'Football and Sport'. Religion would fit in to a study of worldviews but should not get special attention."
The NSS submitted evidence to the commission ahead of both its interim report, which recommended "strategic, urgent intervention" last year, and the final one published today.
The society called for legislative change to enshrine a national entitlement giving every pupil the right to high quality, non-partisan education about religion and belief. It argued that schools should teach about a diverse range of religious and non-religious worldviews.
It said pupils should study how people's worldviews may influence their thinking on philosophical, moral and cultural issues and how the freedom to manifest religion and belief interacts with the rights of others.
And it called for a separation between any form of confessionalism or religious instruction and education about RE, arguing that the promotion of religion should only take place in a voluntary or non-state funded environment.
The NSS has set out its vision for high-quality, non-partisan education through its 21st Century RE For All campaign.
In April the NSS hosted a conference on the future of teaching about religion and belief, where panellists from educational backgrounds argued for reform. The keynote speaker, philosopher AC Grayling, called for teaching to look broadly at "the history of ideas", including topics such as classical mythology and different types of thought.
A survey published this week revealed that religious education is was one the subjects least enjoyed by pupils.
The final report is available to download here: Final Report of the Commission on RE
An executive summary is available here: Final Report (Exec Summary) of the Commission on RE
Former education secretary renews call for reform of religion in schools
Posted: Tue, 17 Jul 2018 17:05
Religious education should be replaced with a new national 'Religion, Belief and Values' subject, a former education secretary has recommended.
The call to reform RE is one of a number of recommendations from a new report from Charles Clarke (education secretary 2002-04) and Linda Woodhead (professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University) – A New Settlement Revised: Religion and Belief in Schools – a follow up to their 2015 report.
The National Secular Society has broadly welcomed the proposals to reform RE but branded other aspect of the report a "disappointing surrender to vested interests".
The suggested reforms to RE are broadly in line with the National Secular Society's call for legislative change to replace current laws surrounding RE with a new national entitlement for religion and belief learning.
The report recommends that a new syllabus and curriculum for Religion, Belief and Values (RBV) should be determined by a national 'Advisory Council on Religion, Beliefs and Values' (ACRBV), appointed by the secretary of state.
The body would represent "a balance between different faiths and beliefs", but with members "selected for their relevant expertise, and not in order to represent any particular faith or belief".
The report reiterates the widely held view that the current arrangements for RE – where it is devised by SACRES/ASC (Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education/Agreed Syllabus Conferences) – are not fit for purpose.
The authors however backtrack on previous recommendations that seemed to suggest any instructional/confessional RE should be separated from the academic subject. The latest report states: "of course all schools would be entitled to offer a wider syllabus, and more study, inside or outside school hours." The report does however reiterate calls for Ofsted to inspect religion and belief education, community cohesion and assemblies in all schools.
The report recommends that the right to withdraw from RBV should end following reform.
The report supports the continued existence of faith schools, recommending that "Children of families of faith should where possible be able to attend schools of that faith, and that their current legal right to be given priority in the admissions process should not be removed".
The authors are clear, however, that moves to phase out religious selection are "highly beneficial" and call on churches and other faith bodies to make "strong and continues progress in reducing the numbers of their schools where faith is a criterion for admission".
Arrangements which enable faith schools to discriminate in their employment should be kept "under review, the report says.
On collective worship, the report appears to backtrack on the authors' 2015 recommendation that the legal duty on schools to hold an act of daily (usually Christian collective worship) be repealed. The report cites "important elements of Church of England opinion" as the reason behind their change of mind, along with a concern that abolishing the statutory requirement for collective worship will undermine assemblies.
Responding to the report, NSS education and schools officer, Alastair Lichten, said:
"Some of the proposals represent baby steps in the right direction, but the report overall appears to be an admission that much needed reforms are not possible without the approval of religious bodies. That is a worrying state of affairs for a modern education system – and again highlights the urgent need to separate religion and state in all areas – particularly education.
"Much of the positives in the report come across as watered down versions of proposals already widely supported in the educational community. The backsliding from the previous report highlights how the privileged position of organised religion in state education is leading to an expedient acceptance of standards that are lower than is desirable."
The National Secular society is campaigning for:
An inclusive and secular education system, with an end to state funded faith schools.
Schools to be brought under the Equality Act to end to religious discrimination against pupils in admissions and against teachers in employment, unless an occupational requirement can be demonstrated.
All pupils to have the same national entitlement to high quality, non-partisan education about religion and belief.
Abolition of the law that requires schools to hold acts of worship. We would instead like to see a duty on schools to ensure that all aspects of its curriculum, including assemblies, are respectful and inclusive of all pupils, regardless of their religion or belief, including non-belief.
Mixed-sex schools shouldn’t segregate children, says DfE
Posted: Thu, 28 Jun 2018 14:57
Mixed-sex schools in England should not generally separate pupils by sex or faith, the government has said.
In new non-statutory guidance, the Department for Education (DfE) has advised schools not to segregate children by characteristics protected under the Equality Act 2010, which include faith, sex and race.
The guidance comes in the wake of a landmark ruling in the Court of Appeal last year that an Islamic school's policy of segregating boys from girls amounted to unlawful sex discrimination. Al-Hijrah school in Birmingham segregated boys and girls from year five upwards for religious reasons for all lessons, break and lunchtimes, school trips and school clubs.
The guidance says separating pupils in a way that "denies them the choice or opportunity to interact socially, or to interact in an educational setting, with pupils of the other sex" is likely to be unlawful.
When pupils are separated school leaders and governors will be expected to justify their policy to Ofsted and other inspectors, parents and the wider community.
The guidance says schools may take proportionate action when they reasonably think girls or boys suffer a disadvantage related to their sex, have different needs or participate disproportionately little in an activity.
It adds that schools should check there are no practices that could result in less favourable treatment of a boy or a girl because of his or her sex.
Schools will be allowed to use single-sex sports teams on the basis of physical disadvantage, provided there are comparable sporting activities on offer for the other sex. They remain obliged to provide separate toilet and washing facilities for boys and girls aged eight and over. Existing statutory exceptions also allow schools to provide separate boarding accommodation.
Alastair Lichten, the National Secular Society's education and schools officer, said the guidance was "mostly just common sense interpretation of existing equalities legislation".
"There may be some limited circumstances in which gender segregation is justified but it is reasonable to ask schools to justify it. For some schools – particularly faith schools – gender segregation is a way of preparing boys and girls for different roles and advancing unhealthy attitudes towards girls and women. Where that happens it is unacceptable, so we're pleased to see the DfE making this clear.
"But it's disappointing that the guidance doesn't explicitly address RE. Gender segregated RE implies that students are being prepared for religious roles, rather than being educated about religion and beliefs."
In 2017 the NSS wrote to the DfE after its research found a number of state-funded Jewish schools where pupils receive different religious education lessons according to their gender.
At the time of the Al-Hijrah ruling around 20 mixed-sex Christian, Jewish or Islamic faith schools in the UK practised gender segregation. Shortly afterwards Hasmonean High School, a secondary high school for pupils from orthodox Jewish families, announced its intention to split into two schools to evade the implications of the ruling.
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