The British Humanist Association has condemned the Governments ‘joint statement’ with religious groups released today, joining teacher representatives and some religious groups such as the Hindu Council UK in objecting to increased support for ‘faith’ schools.
Andrew Copson, BHA Education officer said, ‘To expand state-funded faith schools is to increase discrimination in school admissions against pupils and their parents and to increase employment discrimination against teachers. It means more pupils will be segregated by religion and ethnicity and denied the right to a fully balanced education or to school with children from different backgrounds and learn with and from them.‘
‘Again and again opinion polls have shown clear majorities opposed to faith schools and their expansion but the Government is dismissing these serious and widespread concerns as mere ‘misunderstandings’. The Government has behaved disgracefully, both in its general policies and in the way it has conducted itself in this present announcement, stitching up a statement with religious vested interests behind closed doors.’
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Read the BHA’s policy on religion and schools A Better Way Forward here .
The British Humanist Association (BHA) represents and supports the non-religious and campaigns for an end to religious privilege and to discrimination based on religion or belief and is the largest organisation in the UK working for a secular society. In education, this means an end to the expansion of faith schools and for the assimilation of those that currently exist into a system of inclusive and accommodating community schools.