NSS publications

2020 research supported by the NSS shows how the Church of England uses its dominant position within the RE community to advance its own theological approach to the subject.

• Understanding Christianity and the study of religion and worldviews: How the C of E has gained control of religious education (PDF, 1.5 Mb)

This report highlights how academisation has enabled faith groups to increase their influence over all schools, including those with no religious character. With little public debate, religious governance has increased, while secular oversight has diminished.

• Power grab: Academisation and the threat to secular education (PDF, 2 Mb)

The NSS's 2020 report reveals how religious exceptions undermine the aims of the Equality Act 2010.

• Faith-shaped holes: How religious privilege is undermining equality law (PDF, 1.3 Mb)

Our 2019 report makes the case for removing religious appointees from education committees in Scotland. It systematically examines the arguments in defence of religious appointees and the positions of local authorities.

• Religious reps: unrepresentative, unnecessary and unjustified (PDF, 900 Kb)

State support for faith-based schooling is often justified in terms of parental choice. This report unravels the narrative around school choice, highlighting the many areas where families have little reasonable choice but a faith school and those assigned faith schools against their wishes. It also questions whether the "choice" of faith schools are a reasonable expectation consistent with the state's duty to provide education.

• The choice delusion: how faith schools restrict primary school choice in England (PDF, 513 Kb)

This study examined the SRE policies of faith based secondary schools, the majority of which are explicitly delivering SRE within the tenets of their faith, rather than in an impartial and secular framework that would generally be found at non-faith schools. Although SRE policies vary greatly from school to school, in many cases they amount to the promotion of a particular religious ideology within attitudes to sex and relationships.

• Unsafe Sex Education: The risk of letting religious schools teach within the tenets of their faith (PDF, 518 Kb)

This report outlines the central arguments for a separation of church and state and considers the challenges involved in making this a reality. It argues that disestablishment is right both as a basic matter of principle and in order to make the UK more representative of the changing landscape of religion and belief.

• NSS Disestablishment Report 2017 (PDF, 199 Kb)

Marking our 150th anniversary, this brochure looks at some of the key landmarks in our history. From being prosecuted for 'blasphemy' to being instrumental in abolishing it. The story shows how far the secularist movement has come, always at the forefront of progressive social change.

• The National Secular Society – The First 150 Years (1866 – 2016) (PDF, 3 Mb)