Conservative plans on citizenship and ‘impartiality’ raise concerns for fact-based education

Humanists UK has expressed concerns about Conservative plans to reject statutory citizenship education in primary schools and wider proposals on ‘political impartiality’ that could create a chilling effect on the teaching of settled science and human rights.

In her speech to the Conservative conference in Birmingham on 6 October, Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott unveiled a ‘pledge to parents’ under which a future Conservative government would reject plans to make citizenship statutory from Key Stage 1, ban schools from holding ‘culture’ or ‘identity’ days, and add a political impartiality obligation to the Teachers’ Standards. 

Teachers would face annual training on ‘contentious issues’ such as climate change, sex, and gender, and Ofsted would inspect lessons for impartiality, referring ‘serious breaches’ to the Teaching Regulation Agency. The pledge also includes a commitment on the hijab in schools, which Humanists UK has responded to separately.

Concerns about citizenship

In November 2025, the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review recommended that the core elements of citizenship – democracy, the rule of law, human rights, and civic responsibility – become statutory from Key Stage 1, and the UK Government accepted the recommendation. Humanists UK had called for exactly this in its submission to the review.

Trott said that the more time children spend ‘on this extra stuff, the less time they’ve got to learn the important stuff’. Humanists UK said that learning how democracy works and how to weigh evidence is not ‘extra stuff’, and noted that the UK Government’s own cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters, identifies citizenship education as a tool against extremism.

Climate change is a fact, not an opinion

Naming climate change as a ‘contentious issue’ risks treating settled science as a matter of political opinion. Humanists UK previously led a successful campaign to stop state schools in England presenting ‘intelligent design’ as a scientific alternative to evolution. Ofsted inspecting individual lessons for ‘bias’ could make teachers reluctant to teach anything a parent might object to, including LGBT+ issues. Section 28 was rarely if ever enforced, but for 15 years teachers avoided the subject altogether: the threat of inspection and referral is enough to do damage.

Where closer scrutiny of teaching materials could help

Parts of the Conservative proposals – in particular the commitment to publish the materials used in PSHE and to give Ofsted a clearer remit to inspect lessons, assemblies, and external resources – could be useful if they were applied even-handedly to faith schools. Humanists UK has repeatedly uncovered and reported to Ofsted resources in state-funded religious schools that promoted sexist, homophobic, or otherwise unacceptably biased viewpoints to children:

• In 2018 we revealed that a state-funded Charedi girls’ school in Hackney had redacted GCSE history textbooks to remove mentions of gay people and of women socialising with men; Ofsted subsequently rated the school ‘inadequate’. 
• In 2021 we exposed A Fertile Heart, a Catholic relationships and sex education resource taught that men were ‘created to initiate sexual relationships’ and women to be ‘receiver-responders’, and that gay and lesbian people must abstain from sex. The then Schools Minister Nick Gibb eventually condemned it, but said the Government had no power to withdraw it, and faith schools remain legally able to teach RSE in line with their religious ethos.
• In 2023, we highlighted Ofsted findings against Muslim schools that told pupils of the ‘negative impact of homosexuality’.

Richy Thompson, Director of Human Rights and Advocacy, said:

‘Citizenship education is how children learn what democracy is, what their rights are, and how to tell a good argument from a bad one. Nobody wants to see teachers pushing party politics in the classroom, and the law already forbids it. But we are concerned that treating climate science as “contentious” and asking Ofsted to police lessons for “bias” could lead to teachers quietly dropping anything that might attract a complaint – the kind of chilling effect that Section 28 had for a generation.’