Children’s rights
In too many places the law neglects the fact that children are full human beings with human rights. Those rights include the right to develop your own beliefs and make your own choices as you increase in maturity. It also means children deserve protection from all forms of violence and harassment. Our support for children’s rights underpins much of our policy relating to schools and pupils’ freedom of thought.
In many areas, the UK does not comply with its treaty obligations to children’s rights. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child identified children being forced to pray in schools, and the near-total segregation of children by religion in Northern Ireland as key failings.
We strongly endorse the specific wording and background principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). We’ve argued the treaty should be made directly enforceable in our own laws.
I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and human rights activist
If the child’s future is left open as much as possible for his own finished self to determine, the fortunate adult that emerges will already have achieved, without paradox, a certain amount of self-fulfilment.
Joel Feinberg, legal philosopher and humanist
Policy briefings
Citizenship educationSome schools are not educating pupils about democracy, human rights, and critical thinking.Read the briefing →
Faith school admissionsReligious state schools select pupils by their family’s religion, driving religious, social, and ethnic segregation.Read the briefing →
Illegal religious schoolsIllegal schools in England are completely unregulated, often providing a religious-only curriculum and sometimes perpetrating physical and sexual abuse against children.Read the briefing →
Private religious schoolsReligious private schools often fail to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, and deny young people their basic freedoms.Read the briefing →
Relationships and Sex EducationOpt-outs built into relationships and sex education (RSE) mean that many children are not receiving fact-based, objective teaching about sex and relationships. Others aren’t receiving…Read the briefing →
Religious EducationIn many schools the curriculum teaches religions as true, and in many others it teaches about religions but not non-religious worldviews like humanism.Read the briefing →
Religious state schoolsReligious state schools are a growing part of the state system; they discriminate in admissions, employment, and the curriculum; and are privileged in decisions around…Read the briefing →
Religious worship in schoolsAll state schools are legally required to carry out daily worship. Many do so and almost invariably this worship must be exclusively Christian.Read the briefing →
Science educationSome schools teach creationism as true or fail to teach evolution as true. Others fail to teach well about the scientific method.Read the briefing →
Socio-economic discriminationEngland and Northern Ireland have no law preventing socio-economic discrimination in, for example, the provision of housing, education, medical care, or other services.Read the briefing →
Strengthening children's rightsChildren's rights are not properly recognised in UK law, never mind upheld.Read the briefing →
From our past
Humanists have stood up for children’s rights for more than 150 years: campaigning for free, non-religious schooling for every child and for family allowances to lift children out of poverty, as well as campaigning for an end to child abuse. Below are three stories from that history.
People
The humanist MP whose case for family allowances, paid to mothers for every child, became the Family Allowances Act 1945.
Article
Lessons in liberty: humanists and education
Discover some of the teachers, activists, and institutions who shaped modern education.
History
National Education League (1869)
A campaign, backed by freethinkers including George Jacob Holyoake, for free, compulsory, non-sectarian schooling for every child.