Secular Education Forum
The Secular Education Forum (SEF) provides expert and professional advice and opinion to the National Secular Society (NSS) on issues related to education and provides a forum for anyone with expertise in the intersection of education and secularism.
The SEF's main objective is to advocate the value of secularism/religious neutrality as a professional standard in education. The SEF welcomes supporters of all faiths and none. It provides expert support for the NSS working towards a secular education system free from religious privilege, proselytization, partisanship or discrimination.
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Education blogs and commentary
A selection of blogs and comment pieces on education and secularism. For education news from the NSS, please click here.
A government blueprint for more religious control of schools?
Posted: Wed, 30th Mar 2022
The government's new proposals for education reform in England could see increased discrimination, and most non-faith schools placed in faith-based academy trusts. Alastair Lichten explores the threat to secular education posed by the 'Opportunity for all' white paper.
'Opportunity for all' sets out the government's vision for the future of England's education system. But perhaps the biggest opportunity created is for further religious control of publicly funded schools.
The white paper published Monday contains a few positive proposals and potential opportunities for secularists. However, the central proposal – a renewed push for all schools to academise and join multi-academy trusts (MATs) – poses a grave threat to the future of secular education.
More funding for CofE and other faith-based academies
Establishing a new MAT has costs for any provider, but the paper singles out those "which Dioceses and other religious authorities face" and gives them special treatment by committing to "develop options for financial support". This would put anyone developing secular or community ethos trusts at a disadvantage.
We've long warned that the government's enthusiasm for faith based MATs risks replacing secular oversight of state schools with opaque religious governance. The established church hopes to see local education authorities "wither on the vine" so they can take over this role. In our 2018 report on academisation and its threat to secular education, we revealed almost half of non-faith schools in MATs where potentially governed by faith based trusts, and hundreds had become faith schools. The proposals risk seriously accelerating this trend.
While the paper claims that once moved into MATs "schools will retain their ethos", the DfE have continually failed to set out meaningful protections for the secular ethos of community schools. This is in marked contrast to proposals to protect what is euphemistically referred to as "statutory freedoms" for faith schools that become academies. We should be challenging, not entrenching, the 'freedoms' faith schools have to discriminate when selecting pupils, staff and governors, or when creating their curriculum.
The commitment to "ensuring that all providers of schools with a religious character remain able to open new schools, once all schools are in trusts" has two worrying implications. The most obvious is more non-faith schools taken over, or faith schools forced under tighter control. But this could also herald another attempt to introduce new 100% religiously selective academies.
New attack on the 50% cap
Currently new academies (free schools) have a 50% cap on religious selection of their pupils. This has meant some religious groups (principally the Catholic Education Service) that wish to practice up to 100% religiously discriminatory admissions have had to propose voluntary aided schools instead. These face comparatively more scrutiny and opportunity for public opposition, so have been less successful. If the government want "all providers" of faith schools to continue opening new schools, and for all new schools to be academies, they may be preparing to weaken the 50% cap.
Rural schools
Protections for rural schools may also lead to increased religious control. Most rural primary schools are already faith based, and 47% of families in rural areas already face "high" or "extreme" restrictions on the choice of a non-faith primary school.
All these schools (faith and secular alike) may now need to join MATs, and Church run diocesan trusts are likely to be the only supported and established option. The idea of a community school free from church control could entirely disappear from large parts of rural England.
Admissions
The paper promises to deliver "fair admissions across England", including strengthening the role of local authorities to provide "fair admissions for their local areas". They even promise to "work with local authorities, trusts, schools and parents to develop options to reform the admissions framework, including the setting of over-subscription criteria".
Mention of religious discrimination and selection is conspicuously absent. But any discussion of admissions reform provides an opportunity to get this on the agenda.
Strengthening RSE
A commitment to "strengthen Relationships, Sex and Health Education" (RSE) guidance is positive. Current guidance undermines RSE by allowing schools to teach through a discriminatory, limiting or shame based religious ethos, and emboldening regressive religious groups targeting schools which do teach inclusive, comprehensive RSE.
Tackling illegal schools
The NSS has been pivotal in challenging unregistered, illegally operating faith schools. These are often deliberately unregistered to avoid safeguarding or education quality regulation. The commitment to "introduce legislation" to strengthen Ofsted's powers in this area is welcome. But such reforms are overdue and need to be coupled with support for local authorities.
What's next?
White papers set out broad principles not specifics. We will be engaging with the government over these proposals, seeking clarity where necessary, opposing greater religious influence, and supporting positive reforms. If you support our call for true equal "opportunity for all", then please consider joining the NSS, or supporting one of our campaigns.
An inclusive Britain starts with inclusive schools
Posted: Wed, 23rd Mar 2022
Keeping religion and state education separate is the best way of ensuring schools promote free inquiry, equality and inclusivity, argues Stephen Evans.
Last week the government published its 'inclusive Britain strategy', setting out a range of actions to tackle racial and ethnic disparities and promote fairness.
A glaring issue overlooked is that of faith schools. Robust evidence shows that faith-based education builds discrimination into the system and undermines social cohesion by segregating pupils on religious, ethnic, racial and social grounds.
A third of state-funded schools across Britain are faith schools. The vast majority are Christian, and many of these operate discriminatory admissions policies. The impact of this is being keenly felt by families in Liverpool, where parents are struggling to access local schools, and youngsters are facing long journeys because nearby places are reserved for practicing Christian families.
Dr Amina Elmi from the Granby Somali Women's Group has been lobbying for a change in schools' admissions, arguing that admission policies are stopping "people from a certain community - from a certain race or faith - from getting into the schools in their locale".
The problem is acknowledged by local councillor Tom Logan, cabinet member for schools, who points to "a cluster of schools with a religious element to their admissions policies so if you're not Catholic or from the Church of England or you don't want a faith-based education, you'll find it difficult to get a place". Many parents up and down the country will have faced a similar situation.
The government's inclusive Britain strategy is focussed on addressing racial and ethnic disparities, but it's clear that a broader review is needed to address the myriad ways faith schools at best fail to foster, and at worst actively undermine, inclusiveness.
But there are encouraging signs that an increasing number of local people are willing to call out discriminatory admissions and make some noise. One such group is Fair Schools for Oldham, a group of parents, teachers, and local residents who got organised after they realised their new "multi-faith, multi-ethnic, inclusive school" was going to reserve 50% of its places for children of families that practice a faith – meaning half of its places will be closed to many local children. The group says it wants everyone to have equal access to good quality local state-funded schools, "regardless of their social class, religious faith, ethnic origin, or postcode".
Parents in Wigan are also fighting the unfairness of faith-based education. The council's plans to close a community school there will leave many families with no option other than a faith school. This in an area where the high prevalence of faith schools means 90% of families already face high or extreme restrictions on the choice of a non-faith school. Three in ten families across the country face similar restrictions.
Even when children are given a place in a faith school with a religious outlook they don't share, the faith ethos permeates all aspects of school life, making it far from an inclusive environment for many. Even non-faith-based academies and community schools are under a legal obligation to provide a daily act of broadly Christian worship, further undermining inclusivity. The only schools that do a good job of holding inclusive assemblies are those that ignore the law and omit the worship.
But the inclusivity problems in our schools go further than alienating children from different religion or belief backgrounds.
The disinviting of a gay author from a state-funded Catholic faith school in Croydon this month highlights how religious control of schools can negatively impact on inclusivity for LGBT pupils and families too.
The reason given by the Archdiocese of Southwark for cancelling the visit of award-winning children's author Simon James Green was that his representation of LGBT characters and support for LGBT rights was in conflict with their religious ethos.
The diocese says: "At the heart of every Catholic school sits the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Catholic Church." Herein lies the problem. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "homosexual acts" are "acts of grave depravity", "intrinsically disordered" and "contrary to the natural law." Our publicly funded schools shouldn't be agents of religious dogma.
The National Secular Society has long argued the requirement for faith schools to teach RSE and PSHE in accordance with their religious ethos creates significant tension with their duties under the Equality Act – and provides cover to marginalise LGBT pupils and stigmatise same-sex relationships.
NSS research revealed 77% of secondary faith schools in England are delivering Relationship & Sex Education according to the teachings of the school's religious ethos, rather than in an impartial manner. Many Catholic schools' RSE policies often explicitly denigrated same-sex relationships, or otherwise marginalised or excluded discussions of LGBT issues and representation of LGBT individuals.
Chair of the Catholic news weekly The Tablet Mike Craven says the treatment of Simon James Green "reinforces public perceptions of Catholics as prejudiced and Catholic schools places where teachers are second-guessed by bishops and bureaucrats and laity are ignored and marginalised." He says it will lead taxpayers and politicians to question why hundreds of millions of pounds of public money are being spent to allow a religious institution to reinforce public prejudice against a vulnerable group of young people." Quite.
He questions whether the prohibition on the physical expression of love outside heterosexual marriage is still tenable. That's a matter for the Catholic faithful and the Church. Religions will always have their internal theological disputes. These should be played out in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, not schools.
There's no shortage of people who claim that religion is a force for good. And in many ways, it can be. But that's not the whole story. It can also be intolerant, divisive and discriminatory.
State education can play a vital role in creating a fairer, more open and more inclusive society. To achieve that, the schools we all fund should be equally welcoming to children of all religion or belief backgrounds, ethnicities and sexual orientations.
An inclusive Britain begins with inclusive schools. We need an education system that, at its core, promotes free inquiry, equality and inclusivity. Organised religion's continuing role in state education is a glaring impediment to that. That's why religion and state education must be kept separate.
Religious education isn’t the right vehicle for civics
Posted: Wed, 23rd Feb 2022
The government thinks religious education is important for developing children's critical thinking, values, and understanding of different traditions. There are much better ways to achieve this than through the outdated subject of RE, argues Stephen Evans.
In recent years there's been a steady stream of reports recommending reform of religious education – a contentious subject widely regarded as out of date, underfunded, unpopular and lacking a clear purpose.
The government has shown little enthusiasm for addressing RE's myriad problems. It has instead supported the subject remaining on the curriculum even though its original narrow doctrinal purpose has changed irrevocably. It also seems cravenly weak in the face of clerics and religious groups who regard RE as their territory.
But an insight into the government's current thinking on RE has been provided in responses to parliamentary questions about the subject's "societal value for young people".
Summarising the responses, the government thinks religious education is important for:
- developing children's knowledge of British values and traditions, and those of other countries.
- developing children's social skills and empathy.
- developing skills of critical enquiry, creative problem-solving and communication.
- developing knowledge and understanding of the religions and beliefs which form part of contemporary society.
- promoting mutual respect, understanding and tolerance in a diverse society.
- promoting shared values and challenging racism and discrimination.
These are worthwhile objectives. But surely this is a vision for a civics or citizenship education, not religious education. If this is what the government wants to achieve, the subject should be uncoupled from the religious interests that currently control it and called what it actually is.
At present the law requires all state-funded schools, including free schools and academies, to provide RE as part of their curriculum. The subject, along with a daily act of Christian worship, has been compulsory for the entirety of a pupil's school life since 1944.
The point then was to inculcate Christianity. Now, religious instruction has largely given way to a more non-confessional approach in community schools. But in faith schools, the subject is controlled by religious authorities and still used to inculcate religious viewpoints. The subject is even inspected by religious bodies, rather than the state. Not only does this undermine the subject's credibility, but it also restricts pupils' freedom to develop their own beliefs – the opposite of education.
Even away from the faith schools the subject is an anachronistic anomaly in that the curriculum content is determined locally by committees dominated by faith groups. These committees were originally set up in the very different world of 1944 and have long outlived their usefulness.
The privileging of religion in the way the subject is arranged, and the legal framework that underpins it, is outdated and hard to justify. It is noteworthy that government statements never do attempt to offer any justification for the retention of the 1944 framework.
Schools have a role to play in teaching young people about the diversity of religion and belief in the world they live in, but does it really need to be a subject in its own right?
The time has surely now come to consider dispensing with the whole concept of religious education.
This would free up time for a renewed emphasis on citizenship, an area of learning that provides young people with the knowledge and skills needed to understand, challenge and engage with democratic society. It is a part of the curriculum that encourages pupils to consider religious and other forms of diversity around them – and to understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens. The ethical debates that pupils need to have would still be there, but without the inbuilt assumption that values and morality all flow from religion.
Faith leaders might not like it, but their privileged influence over state education is unjustifiable and needs to be challenged. Education should serve society and its future citizens, not religious interests.
Ensuring every pupil has an entitlement to impartial knowledge about different worldviews makes sense. Equipping young people with a working knowledge of a range of religious and nonreligious beliefs will help them to navigate the increasingly diverse world around them.
But an in-depth understanding of the world's religions isn't a necessary pre-condition for a peaceful and tolerant society. Moral and political virtues such as civility, citizenship, tolerance and inclusivity, coupled with an awareness of and respect for human rights, will nurture greater harmony and social cohesion. These shared values should be promoted throughout our schools. Religious education isn't the appropriate vehicle for that.
Recent studies agree: the risks of circumcision outweigh any benefits. It’s time to rethink our permissive approach to genital cutting.
Posted: Mon, 31st Jan 2022
Dr Antony Lempert says the findings of two recent medical papers critical of infant circumcision should prompt us to greater protect children from religious and cultural genital cutting.
Two recently published medical articles have highlighted the dangers of the most common surgical procedure worldwide – and one that is performed almost exclusively for religious or cultural reasons on children too young to consent.
Infant male circumcision is widely acknowledged to be a non-therapeutic (i.e. medically unnecessary) procedure which is not actively recommended by any medical association in the world.
There are nonetheless many claims that it does confer some medical benefit on children and men, or that it is at least harmless. Medical benefit is often hailed as a coincidental advantage by religious leaders who wish to protect their traditional forced genital cutting practices from criticism or limitation.
But these two articles demonstrate otherwise.
The first, by Matthew Deacon and Gordon Muir and published in Nature, analyses the evidence behind the most common claims of the apparent benefits of circumcision, such as preventing urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted diseases and penile cancer. It picks out the flaws in previous studies sometimes cited as proof of these supposed benefits, and finds that most are generally outweighed by risks. Complications that can result from circumcision, the review paper finds, include bleeding, infections and impaired sexual function, in addition to the excruciating pain the procedure inevitably causes.
The article concludes: "From the perspective of the individual boy, there is no medical justification for performing a circumcision prior to an age that he can assess the known risks and potential benefits, and choose to give or withhold informed consent himself."
The second article, published in European Urology Focus, finds from research at a Canadian hospital that the risks of neonatal circumcision are "greater than generally assumed". From 2000-2013, 19 previously healthy newborn babies were admitted for acute complications following circumcision. Eight boys required surgery, three for severe bleeding. Seven were admitted to an intensive care unit, and two of these died.
Because circumcision is unregulated here, little data on complications is available in the UK. But the evidence that does exist is consistent with these findings. In 2011, Birmingham Children's Hospital admitted 11 baby boys to the paediatric ICU with life-threatening complications from circumcision.
The potential for such complications might be considered an acceptable risk of surgery performed to treat medical problems. Yet when the surgery is performed on a healthy, non-consenting child who has not yet had the opportunity to experience sex with intact genitals, there are no substantive arguments to justify placing that child at risk of such serious harm.
It is a singular anomaly that non-therapeutic circumcision continues to take place despite lack of a medical indication or even evidence of overall benefit. This turns medical practice and child safeguarding on its head. Most medical interventions start with an evidence base of benefit before even considering the risk/benefit ratio; the information is subsequently offered to patients who can then make an informed choice.
Children are usually given special safeguarding protections because of their vulnerability. In practice this means parents can consent on behalf of their child, in the child's best interests, to medically necessary procedures recommended by doctors. For obvious reasons, parents do not usually have the right to demand that doctors or others perform medically unnecessary surgical procedures on their children. There is no medical, ethical or child safeguarding reason why ritual genital cutting of male infants and small children should be the sole exception to this rule. Rather, there is every reason to treat ritual male circumcision of non-consenting children as a significant safeguarding concern.
Most people cherish agency over their own body, especially their genitals. Intact men recognise their foreskin as a sensitive, functional, erotogenic intimate part of their body; it would be a serious sexual assault to surgically remove the healthy foreskin from a non-consenting adult man.
That society values autonomy so much that we permit people to refuse even life-saving surgery, for example the removal of cancerous limbs, only serves to highlight the unjustifiable contrast between the rights of adults and the lack of protection afforded to male babies, children and the adults they will become.
These two latest papers add to a large and growing body of evidence that cutting healthy parts off the genitals of non-consenting, vulnerable people is not medically justifiable and can cause serious harm. There can be no justification for more children to be subjected to this procedure, which is usually requested by parents to concord with the parents' religious or cultural affiliations.
Wounding children without an explicit medical reason will usually result in child safeguarding procedures and sometimes to prosecution of the perpetrators. Ordinarily, religious or cultural reasons will not serve as an excuse. The courts have consistently ruled that ritual scarification, flagellation and the cutting of female genitals (FGM) on children cannot be justified even if they are central to the religious or cultural beliefs of the child's parents or community.
Yet no jurisdiction in the world prohibits the painful, risky and permanent procedure that is circumcision from being performed on young male children. While some jurisdictions, notably Iceland, have attempted to ban non-therapeutic infant circumcision, intense lobbying from religious groups has thus far proved an insurmountable barrier.
Things need to change. While we continue to give free rein to individuals to perform circumcision on babies without medical need, we're failing the thousands of boys who would have otherwise refused this lifelong modification to their bodies.
And, saddest of all, we'll continue to see babies die wholly preventable deaths from a wholly unnecessary procedure.
Image: StockSnap, Pixabay
Appointments of future archbishops shouldn’t be the state’s business
Posted: Thu, 27th Jan 2022
Church of England plans to give Anglican church leaders from around the world greater power in choosing future archbishops of Canterbury serve as a reminder of the need to separate church and state, argues Stephen Evans.
A row is brewing over a possible change to the process for deciding who becomes the most senior cleric in the established Church.
The Church of England is currently consulting on plans to allow overseas Anglican leaders from churches around the world to be given much greater power in choosing future archbishops of Canterbury.
According to The Times, "English priests and worshippers have expressed surprise and anger at proposals for a five-fold increase in the power that Anglican churches overseas will be given in nominating the Church of England's most senior bishop."
Their concerns centre around whether the proposals might diminish the prospect of a woman or a supporter of same-sex marriage being appointed as archbishop of Canterbury, as many Anglican churches globally still do not allow women to become bishops and most steadfastly oppose the idea of conducting gay marriages in church.
But it isn't only the Anglican faithful who might have cause to be concerned.
Through the Church's established status, the archbishop of Canterbury enjoys a significant degree of political power in the UK. This raises important questions about the appropriateness of foreign influence.
He and his bishops claim 26 seats in the House of Lords which provides unique access to the corridors of power. He is given his own annual debate to lead in parliament, has meetings with the prime minister and government ministers, and enjoys a myriad of other privileged platforms.
This extends to state occasions including coronations, which give the archbishop inappropriate political influence in a country that really should be secular. His position is charged with anointing our head of state and administering the oath, whereby the monarch vows to "maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law".
And let's not forget the influence over public policy gained through the Church's role in state education. One quarter of all publicly funded primary schools in England are run by the Church – the largest single provider of schools in the country.
Overseas influence in who fills this role can only widen the democratic deficit of this ludicrous arrangement. The current bishops' bench in the House of Lords has already been described by the incumbent archbishop Justin Welby (pictured) as "the most orthodox since WWII." Greater influence from reactionary bishops from around the world can only further intensify the disconnect between the Church and the country's increasingly secularised population.
But who leads the Church of England – and the wider international Anglican Communion –should really be nobody's business but the Anglicans'. Disestablishing the CofE and ending its privileged role in our state institutions will ensure this is the case.
Regrettably, the current constitutional settlement makes it impossible for the question of who leads the Church of England to be purely an internal matter for the Church, the way it would be for any other religious denomination.
At present the decision is made by the reigning monarch on the advice of the prime minister, who in turn receives a shortlist of two names from an ad hoc committee called the Crown Nominations Commission.
Boris Johnson's baptism into the Catholic faith called into question the prime minister's role in all of this and highlighted the absurdity of an established church in a modern pluralistic, multifaith democracy.
Establishment is a relic from an age when church and nation were indistinguishable one from another. Today, fewer than 1% of England's population attend church on a typical Sunday. Younger people are increasingly unlikely to identify with any faith. And surveys suggest that a majority of the UK public don't belong to a religion. This reality should be reflected in a new, secular, constitutional settlement.
Then, questions about who becomes the archbishop of Canterbury can be a matter solely for Anglicans to decide – which is the way it should be.
Image: Copyright House of Lords 2021 / Photography by Roger Harris
