At their conference at Harrogate on Saturday, the Liberal Democrat party adopted a new policy on education which included various provisions on religion and schools. Their most significant step was to say that no new state-funded religious schools should be permitted to discriminate in their admissions policies on grounds of religion or belief. They stopped short of extending that prohibition to existing religious schools, which would instead have to prove within five years that their admissions are “inclusive” in order to retain state funding.
The new policy also argues that children of sufficient maturity should be able to withdraw themselves from collective worship and that Religious Education should be on the national curriculum and be balanced, teaching about beliefs instead of what to believe. Importantly, the policy also says that schools should not discriminate against staff on the grounds of their beliefs except in the case of those responsible for religious instruction in faith schools. Currently these schools have wide exemptions to discriminate in employment against teaching and non-teaching staff.
The BHA contributed to the Lib Dem’s thinking behind their new policy through written and oral evidence to their policy working group last year, and also as part of an Accord delegation to a meeting with the Lib Dem education front bench. Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Education and Public Affairs, said, “This is the first time a major party has recognised and sought to address the dangers in religious segregation that will be created by new religious schools. Together with their progressive policies on RE, worship and employment in religious schools, it marks a good step forward for those in the Liberal Democrat party and elsewhere who care about an inclusive state education system.”
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The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity representing and supporting the non-religious, campaigning 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.