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Why the situation in Birmingham means we must address faith in schools

June 11, 2014 by Richy Thompson

somewordsofreply

On Monday, when the documents related to the Ofsted and Education Funding Agency investigations in Birmingham were published and Michael Gove made a statement in the House of Commons about it, we tweeted approvingly when Crispin Blunt MP raised the issue of ‘faith’ schools more generally:

Great from @crispinbluntmp – there should be no faith schools, every school should prepare pupils for life in wider British society

— Humanists UK (@Humanists_UK) June 9, 2014

Arun Arora, Director of Communications for the Church of England, took this single comment and spun it into a baseless article alleging that the British Humanist Association had tried to turn the whole situation in Birmingham into a debate about ‘faith’ schools and attacking the notion that it lends itself to wider comments of this nature. He pointed out that none of the schools involved in Birmingham are legally designated as religious, and that Church of England schools do not face similar issues.

This response completely misrepresents the reason why ‘faith’ schools are relevant to this debate. We never said any of the schools in Birmingham are religious and in fact we have continually drawn attention to the fact that they are not.

The reason why all ‘faith’ schools are relevant to this debate is not because Church of England schools foster extremism – they clearly don’t, and for Arun to base a whole article on the idea that we think they do is bizarre. There have been articles across from publications across the political spectrum discussing the place of ‘faith’ schools in response to the situation in Birmingham. Even the Secretary of State himself, in his response to Crispin Blunt, said that ‘In the light of what has been revealed, it is important to have a debate about the proper place of faith in education’. The Shadow Secretary of State has made similar comments; it is clear that such a discussion has relevance and that to endorse that claim is not to imply in anyway that any of the schools in Birmingham recently investigated were religious ones.

What the existence of Church of England schools plainly does is support the mentality that some state schools are for Anglicans, some are for Catholics, some are for Jews… and of course, given this mentality, we are going to arrive at a situation where some Muslims start seeing certain schools as ‘Muslim schools’, whether those schools are legally designated as Islamic or not. We can only prevent the type of problem we saw in Birmingham from occurring and spreading – and stop segregation between different schools – if we work to get away from the whole notion that different state-funded schools belong to different religious communities.

If we do not do this then we will continue down the path we are on of further segregation between schools along both socio-economic and ethnic grounds. Ted Cantle wrote the main reports into the 2001 race riots, and identified segregated schools as a cause of those riots. The fact that he believes this country’s schools are far more segregated now than they were when the 2001 race riots occurred is shocking.

We welcome any public debate around the place of religion in education that has been happening since Monday. It is right that the public asks questions about the fact that most of the one third of state-funded schools that are religious – including many Church of England schools – are allowed to turn children away who live across the road but whose parents are of the wrong religion or no religion; are allowed to pick the staff they hire on the basis not of their teaching ability but of their faith; and are allowed to teach a curriculum that proselytises a certain religion and dismisses all other worldviews. Surveys show that all of these practices are hugely unpopular with the public at large.

That official representatives of the Church of England wish to stifle that debate seems self-interested at the very least.

Filed Under: Comment, Education, Politics Tagged With: Birmingham, Church of England, community schools, faith schools, OFSTED

The cost of failing to address the place of religion in our schools

June 11, 2014 by Andrew Copson

At last Ofsted and the Education Funding Agency have published their investigations into the ethos and curriculum of a number of Birmingham community schools. For the last few years many organisations, including the British Humanist Association (BHA), have been receiving reports from staff and parents at one or other of these schools outlining their concerns. These allegations have included gender discrimination, homophobia, creationism, discrimination in employment and disciplinary practices, bullying, and an unbalanced and closed curriculum, many of which have now been validated.

When we received them at the BHA and had permission, we passed them on to the Department for Education (DfE) and Ofsted, but it is questionable whether these legitimate concerns would ever have been taken seriously had it not been for the appearance of the ‘Operation Trojan Horse’ letter in March. This letter, now widely considered to be a hoax, gave rise both to investigations of a conspiracy to advance Islamic extremism and to a vicious public debate.

I think focusing on conspiracy and on violent or political extremism are distractions. What many of those who first blew the whistle in the various schools were reacting to was not these claims but to the teaching and ethos of community state schools being gradually changed to reflect a distinctive and narrow religious position, with a closing down of alternative ways of looking at the world, in a way that made the school an extension of the most religious home and denied the pupils alternative views. The most important issue within the situation in Birmingham remains that children in state schools were given an education that may have prepared them well for exams and formal academic achievement but did not open their horizons, develop their freedom of belief, and equip them as informed and critical citizens of modern society to the extent that we should expect.

The specific findings of unbalanced religious teaching and worship and narrow curricula in a number of disciplines in these cases are deeply shocking, but they are a symptom of underlying problems in a school system based on a general religious bias which is increasingly in tension with our more secular and plural society and where the antique provisions embedding religion in the nature even of our non-religious schools are giving rise to a range of perverse outcomes. The situation in Birmingham is symptomatic of our failure to face up to the consequences of these issues still being governed by a basic framework that is now seventy years old and this is a failure of successive governments, none of which have had an overarching strategy or a principled vision of how the state education system should deal with religion or belief.

The last serious attempt to look at all the issues holistically was in 2002 when the BHA published A Better Way Forward. It was the product of policy work and consultation with a range of religious groups as well as educationists and although its proposals may now look dated in a heavily reformed school system, the issues it engaged with are the same. The message was, and still is, simple: all state schools should be equally inclusive of all pupils and staff, with no one group being given special privileges. Schools should not proselytise or discriminate against anyone on the basis of their religion or belief, in admissions, employment, curriculum, ethos, or assemblies.

There are a number of ways in which our law and practice falls short of this: it allows religious discrimination in admissions and employment; it mandates daily acts of religious worship in all schools; it allows unbalanced confessional RE in many schools and makes minimal national prescription in relation to RE in most others, leaving decisions up to schools; beyond bare bones equality law, it fails to lay out any clear template for how schools can or should be made inclusive of children from different religious or belief backgrounds. When you look at them as a package, these facts are astonishing. Not only do they put our school system’s relation to religion way outside of clear international standards and the norms of other liberal democracies, they fail to respect the human rights of children to a horizon-widening education and they fail to recognise the necessity of inclusive civic institutions in a plural society. When combined with the increasingly consumerist approach to public services and our assumption that in schools it is the parent who is the consumer and not the developing child, the fact that the place of religion is so prominent in our school system can lead to people implementing outrageous policies while thinking them entirely acceptable and in keeping with our national provision.

If so many state schools continue to be allowed by law to select the children of Christians, of course Muslim parents and groups will make demands for theirs too. Few people are such policy nerds that they really understand different legal school types, so of course this desire will inevitably translate into influence over schools with no religious character but where most pupils are from Muslim backgrounds. Why shouldn’t a state school with a majority of Muslim parents have compulsory Muslim worship every day?  The law of the land encourages and allows it. And why should alternative activities be provided for children whose parents opt them out? They aren’t in the many schools where the worship is Christian and the potential opters-out are Muslim (or Hindu, or Jewish, or humanist…)

Why shouldn’t a school with children whose parents are mostly Muslim have imams coming in to talk regularly? Schools where most of the parents are Christians (and many where they aren’t) have vicars visiting frequently. Why shouldn’t RE lessons in schools with mostly Muslim parents be mostly about Islam and exclude non-religious beliefs? There’s nothing in the law to rule it out and in many other schools the lessons are mostly about Christianity, even confessionally so, and don’t include teaching about non-religious beliefs at all.

To me the answer is clear – it is because children have the right to a broad and open education tailored to their development as a whole person. No school should be prioritising religious identities over the need for inclusion in our civic institutions. If you agree with me, then surely you would extend the same principle to all state schools. And if so, surely the fact that these principles don’t currently extend in all these ways is the real issue underlying the present problems?

If this is the issue, that what is it that governments have been doing that has allowed this situation to continue? Haven’t they done anything to try to address it?

The Labour governments of 1997-2010 were culpable of engineering the biggest expansion of religious state schools in British history and in legislating to remove employment rights from many staff in these schools. But successive secretaries of state did work to address some of the issues of religion in the system in a more helpful direction – though always stopping short of complete reform. Charles Clarke introduced a national framework for a more balanced subject of RE in all schools – but he failed to make it compulsory. Alan Johnson introduced a duty to promote community cohesion on all schools, including in relation to religion – but failed to change the law allowing religious discrimination in admissions to many schools. Ed Balls introduced new guidance on RE and new resources for school assemblies that effectively replaced compulsory worship in many schools – but he didn’t change the underlying law on RE, he didn’t seek to remove the right of many schools to teach single religious instruction, and he left the law requiring worship on the statute books where it remained in force.

The current coalition government also has a mixed report card, and has similarly failed to treat issues of religion in our education system holistically. It has introduced a quota of pupils from different belief backgrounds in most new religious selective state schools – but it still allows such selection in other schools and has abolished the inspection of community cohesion. It has made provisions for no new school to be able to have pseudoscientific teaching, but has attenuated the regime of accountability to the extent that this is hard to enforce. It has given support to an inclusive new framework for RE but failed to make it compulsory. It has removed many inclusive provisions from subjects such as History, Citizenship, and others, and diluted the applicability of the national curriculum in any case. In its ‘freeing up’ of academies and free schools it has singularly failed to free them of the requirement to hold daily religious worship, which remains in force for all of them.

To seek to address the issue of religion and belief in our schools holistically is not to attempt to hijack the current debate – it is to debate what the real underlying issue is. In the Commons debate on Monday, Michael Gove did not see it this way. He preferred to focus on Britishness and inspection regime reforms – but the shadow education secretary did open up the issue. Perhaps like Labour secretaries of state before him, he might engage more seriously with it. Perhaps he might go further and address it in a genuinely holistic way. Surely he, or our current minister, or some future minister, must do so. We need a serious and inclusive national conversation at a policy level about this issue in the round, and the need is urgent.


Andrew Copson is the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association. This article was first published on politics.co.uk.

Filed Under: Comment, Education, Ethics, Politics Tagged With: Birmingham, community schools, Department for Education, Education Funding Agency, faith schools, Michael Gove, OFSTED, Religious Education, Trojan Horse

Cameron’s Christian country and Church history

June 4, 2014 by Emma C Williams

In what sense is Britain a 'Christian country', asks Emma Williams? Photo: echiner1.

Emma Williams takes a look into the past, at when Britain was perhaps more of a ‘Christian country’. Photo: echiner1.

The statement was inappropriately personal, the thinking disordered. In a formal address at Downing Street, the Prime Minister aligned himself with Eric Pickles – a move tantamount to career suicide in my opinion – as he re-stated and elaborated upon the notion that Britain is ‘a Christian country.’

Since Cameron’s remarks and the letter of objection issued by the BHA there has been endless discussion in the media. Most Christian writers seem astonished and bewildered by the BHA’s response, and cite our country’s history over the last two millennia as definitive proof of the Cameron-Pickles vision. Cameron stated confidently that we should be ‘proud’ of our Christian heritage, and cited his own faith as a driving force in his life and his work. As our PM warmed to his theme, Conservative values and the work of the Church seemed to merge into one; he even credited the son of God with a prototype version of his own ‘Big Society’ – praise indeed for the Messiah.

Since Church history seems to be so important to our leader, since he feels it’s something to be proud of, I thought we should take a look at it. Leaving aside the game of selectively quoting some less-than-pleasant extracts from the Bible (too easy) and the ignoble squabbling that dominates the very early history of the Church (we haven’t got time), let’s focus on the Church in England, which ultimately became the Church of England, and which Cameron praised in the Church Times this April for its ‘openness, beauty, social action and pastoral care.’

Let’s look back a few centuries to the good old days when the Church’s power was at its height and when society might perhaps be described as ‘Christian.’ Those will be the days when the poor worked for free on Church land and paid 10% of what little they produced on their own smallholdings in tithes; if they didn’t do this, they were told, they would go to hell. In the good old days, the Church advocated not only the death penalty but ritual torture; robbing a church or petty vandalism could lead to an unexpected encounter with your own entrails, and Church fathers from St. Thomas Aquinas to the 20th century Bishops in the House of Lords have argued the case for capital punishment. To quote George Holyoake, who coined the term ‘secularism’:

‘In a Christian country, such as England was, a death penalty devoid of religious sanction could not have survived. It was an issue over which the church could have exercised a moral hegemony and failed to do so.’

In the good old days of the 16th and 17th century, teenage girls and unmarried eccentrics were tried for witchcraft and dealing with the devil. Tortured for days until they confessed to whatever they were accused of, these wretched souls were then triumphantly executed before a hysterical crowd. Fast forward to the 19th century and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts is profiting from slave plantations and branding its serfs for the love of Christ, something for which it has recently apologised.

Is this what we should be proud of? In times when the Church wielded greater power in England, I see no moral utopia. The liberal and tolerant society that Cameron seems to claim is at one with Christian principles has in fact been shaped by secular reasoning, by a philosophical process unhindered by dogma and guided only by a belief in human decency. If, as Cameron wrote in the Church Times in April, ‘Christian values … are shared by people of every faith and none,’ then how are they Christian values?

As I write, the Church is the only organisation still exempt from equality laws in this country. Thanks to this unique immunity, it is still debating the radical notion of allowing women into its senior leadership roles, and it still refuses to facilitate equal marriage.

Perhaps when you’re running the country, the good old days of Church control seem attractive. To quote a verse generally omitted these days from everyone’s favourite hymn, ‘the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate: God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.’ No inconvenient questions about expenses, no crass jokes about boarding schools and privilege; the country must have been an easier place to run, especially if you’re on the fiddle or an ex-Etonian.

Yet I credit Cameron with considerably more liberalism than he appears to credit himself. The man seems confused, and is no doubt suffering from the strange condition of double-think that is common to many liberal Christians. The inescapable truth is that our country, with its strange and diverse and inglorious history, can no longer be described as Christian. Based on the history of the Church, it seems that is something to be grateful for.

Filed Under: Humanism, Politics Tagged With: Britain, Christian Country, Church of England, Church Times, david cameron, England, Eric Pickles, UK

Humanism in Europe

May 2, 2014 by Guest author

The European Parliament in Brussels

The European Parliament in Strasbourg

The year’s Easter period has been an important time for humanists of all varieties. A national debate on the nature of secularism and religion in politics has dominated the political landscape. David Cameron’s article calling for Christians to be ‘evangelical’ in their faith, and describing the UK as a ‘Christian country’ began a conversation that was escalated exponentially by the BHA-organised open letter to the Telegraph. Signed by 55 writers, scientists, broadcasters and academics, the letter challenged the Prime Ministers assertion, and expressed some concern at the exclusionary consequences of such a statement. The debate has a variety of offshoots, has featured a range of senior figures from both politics and religion, and is far from over yet. These voices of course come from a wide array of sources, and represent a multitude of different opinions, experiences and worldviews. That said, when taken as a whole, these voices unite to underpin one vitally important point: the role of religion in politics is fundamentally contested.

Given this national platform, humanists, atheists, and freethinkers from all walks of life have come forward and contributed powerful messages to this debate, seizing the opportunity to argue for what they believe in. This has been a fantastic response proving an inspiration to many who share humanist values without explicit knowledge of the BHA. It has also illustrated the importance of religion and politics on a national scale, as well as the symbiotic relationship between the two. We must combine this enthusiasm and quality of voice with a proper desire, passion and commitment to fight for these values at all available opportunities; and it is crucial that we do not limit this argument to national boundaries. This is an argument to be exercised internationally. Across the globe, atheists are being persecuted and discriminated against in huge numbers. Freedom of thought, religion, and belief is an inalienable human right, and one that many take for granted in a pluralist society.

One platform in which these issues really matter is on the European stage. The need for a strong humanist stance in Europe is paramount. Trends of radical populism and reactionary conservatism are rising in many member states. The financial crises’ impact has had a huge role exacerbating these illiberal social tensions. The rise of homophobia, xenophobia, and political violence threatens to undermine the values of Humanism in Europe. European politics is also home to powerful religious lobbies, working to advance their cause in great numbers. We need a coherent, active humanist voice in Europe to challenge this rising tide.

The power of the religious lobby in Europe was brought into sharp focus at the end of last year. A report calling for universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, and decent Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) for all young people, was blocked in the European parliament. The Estrela Report (named after its author, Portuguese MEP Edite Estrela) covered issues such as: access to safe and legal abortion services, education on negative LGBTI stereotypes, and teaching on the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted infections – among other important measures. In the build up to the 10 December vote, MEPs received up to 80,000 communications from minority religious groups to vote against the measure, some including threats. The bill was eventually defeated by 7 votes in the European parliament; a defeat the fell on Human Rights day, adding insult to injury.

Another example of the organisation of the religious right is the ‘One of Us’ campaign. This is a European Citizen’s Initiative movement which intends to prohibit any actions that involve the destruction of human embryos. This would not only have a momentous impact on women’s rights and the power over their own bodies, it would have devastating consequences for women’s health. If this campaign succeeds, some estimates suggest that up to 800 women would die a day, as the European Commission would cut all funding for organisations which provide abortions or abortion-related services. In addition to these grave consequences, it would also scrap funding for all research on human embryonic stem cells. There needs to be a concerted campaign to oppose this well-funded, highly active religious lobby. A direct way that humanists can challenge these lobbies is through the election of politicians with humanist values.

These are just two examples of the challenges facing the humanist cause in Europe today, but they serves to illustrate the need for a united humanist response to the excessive religious influence undermining the European democratic process. These pockets of intolerance are intent on holding back the advances in human rights and personal freedoms that have been hard fought for in Europe in recent decades, and humanists must remain organised and active to oppose them. It is only a European wide opposition in defence of secular and humanist values that can counter these lobbies, and showing candidates for the upcoming elections the importance of this movement to constituents will serve to contribute to this aim.

We must not let the passion and enthusiasm evidenced this week be lost on the broader debate. We must not insulate our humanist views into a theological or a cultural sphere – this week has proved that the views we share are deeply political opinions, with deeply political consequences. The religious lobbies functioning against secularist values are as well funded as they are vocal. There is a danger of complacency among secularists to think that the important battles have been won. It is now more than ever those secularists must speak with the loudest voice, of reason, rationale and human rights.

The last few years have shown that some freedoms we take for granted are far from sacrosanct. Use the passion, energy and momentum from the debate on ‘Christian Britain’, and bring it to bear on the European stage. It is for this reason that we have set up a hustings specifically related to humanism; for the opportunity to here European election candidates debate these issues. The European elections are on 22 May and our humanist hustings on 6 May represent the best opportunity for humanists to have their views listened to by MEP candidates from six major parties.

humanist hustings ebulliten 2 (updated)

The event details and a link to register your attendance can be found here: www.humanism.org.uk/humanisthustings.


Thomas Smith is a recent graduate working in policy and public affairs. He is currently a volunteer for the British Humanist Association, UCATT, and the Labour Party.

Filed Under: Humanism, Politics

Infographic: Is Britain a ‘Christian country’?

April 28, 2014 by Liam Whitton

Last Monday the British Humanist Association coordinated an open letter, signed by more than 50 public figures, including authors, scientists, broadcasters, campaigners and comedians, who wrote to the Prime Minister to challenge his statement that Britain was a Christian country.

The story dominated the news agenda for the past week, and today the BHA has released an infographic which compiles statistics on the current state of religious identity, belief, and values in contemporary Britain. You can view the graphic below:

2014 04 28 LW v5 Infographic Christian Country

Filed Under: Atheism, Campaigns, Politics Tagged With: Christian Country, christianity, david cameron, infographic, religion

Disestablishment: ‘Legitimate power stems from the people’

April 28, 2014 by Guest author

Toby Keynes, chair of Humanist & Secularist Liberal Democrats, gives his view as a Lib Dem on Nick Clegg’s recent calls for disestablishment…

Nick Clegg recently helped reignite debate on the need for disestablishment in the UK

Nick Clegg recently helped reignite debate on the need for disestablishment in the UK

Nick Clegg’s rather mild expression of his personal opinion that church and state should, over time, ‘stand on their own two feet’ won’t come as a great surprise to Liberal Democrats: it’s been party policy for nearly 25 years, since our 1990 Autumn Conference voted for the disestablishment of the Church of England.

It’s a magnificently straightforward and simple policy: ‘This conference calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England.’

That policy has stood unchanged ever since, although we’ve also regularly called for the Bishops to lose their reserved seats in parliament.

In fact, only last month, our Spring Conference again affirmed that ‘Legitimate power stems from the people, not from patronage, heredity or position in the established church.’

Disestablishment is embedded in our party’s core beliefs, and is enshrined in the Lib Dem constitution:

‘…we reject all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, colour, religion, age, disability, sex or sexual orientation and oppose all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality.’

I’m sure Christ wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.


Toby Keynes is chair of Humanist & Secularist Liberal Democrats

Filed Under: Campaigns, Comment, Humanism, Politics Tagged With: Christian Country, disestablishment, Lib Dems, Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg

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