Government strategy highlights RE, citizenship education, and home education oversight as vital to community cohesion

A new UK Government strategy on community cohesion has highlighted Religious Education (RE), citizenship education, and stronger oversight of home education as important to building a more cohesive society. Humanists UK, which recently called for the reintroduction of Ofsted’s duty to inspect how schools in England contribute to community cohesion, a legal requirement until 2011, said it was encouraging that it was recognised that cohesion is shaped in part by what children learn in a school setting.

Protecting What Matters: Towards a more confident, cohesive, and resilient United Kingdom, sets out a wider programme aimed at strengthening social cohesion and resilience across the UK.

Religious Education: promoting diversity and mutual understanding

The strategy says the Government will ‘drive up standards’ in the teaching of RE in England, and will carefully consider including RE in the national curriculum, subject to sector consensus. It also links RE to wider work on cohesion through improved engagement with Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education, and efforts to strengthen faith and belief literacy more broadly.

Humanists UK has long argued that high-quality education about religion and belief can help pupils understand the diversity of modern society and foster mutual understanding. But for that to happen, RE must be objective, critical, inclusive, and pluralistic. Humanists UK welcomed the landmark recommendation of the Curriculum and Assessment Review for RE to be included in the National Curriculum. It is now supporting the work taking place to make this a reality. 

Citizenship education: teaching about democratic life

The paper also commits the Government to mandating citizenship teaching in both primary and secondary schools. It says this will equip young people with the skills to understand the democratic process, constitutional principles such as the rule of law, and threats to democracy, while also placing financial, media, and digital literacy into the curriculum. 

Humanists UK called for citizenship education to be made statutory at primary level in its submission to the curriculum and assessment review, and has welcomed this commitment.

Regulation of home education: closing loopholes used by proprietors of illegal faith schools

The strategy also says the Government will strengthen oversight of home education by introducing registers of children not in school. These will be maintained by local councils and will require parents to notify councils when they are home educating. In some cases, consent will be needed before some vulnerable children can be withdrawn from school. It also says local councils should be able to consider whether a child’s education enables ‘sufficient socialisation’ and supports them to participate fully in life in the UK.

Home education is often used as cover by proprietors of illegal faith schools who claim that children are only receiving supplementary religious education while being majority educated at home. In reality, Ofsted estimates that there are thousands of children attending these illegal faith schools where they receive an education that is narrow in its scope, predominantly scriptural in its content, and deeply conservative, intolerant, and extreme in its outlook. Presently, there is no requirement for home-educated pupils to be registered with councils, and Humanists UK has long campaigned for action against these settings. They have welcomed the measures to close loopholes, including the introduction of a Children Not In School register, in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Faith schools admissions: a notable admission from the strategy

One significant omission from the strategy is the absence of any action on school admissions, despite the clear role admissions policies can play in either fostering or undermining cohesion. State-funded faith schools in England are permitted to select pupils on the basis of religion, dividing children along religious lines from the outset of their education. 

Humanists UK argues that this is bad for social cohesion, as it can reduce opportunities for children from different backgrounds to learn with, from, and about one another. A strategy for building a more cohesive society should address the barriers created by discriminatory faith-based admissions and recognise the case for a more inclusive school system. A review of the Schools Admissions Code has been mentioned as part of the recent Schools White Paper. 

Commenting on the strategy, Humanists UK’s Policy and Campaigns Manager Lewis Young, said:

‘It is encouraging to see the UK Government recognise that Religious Education, citizenship education, and effective oversight of home education all have a role to play in strengthening community cohesion. If these reforms are delivered, they could help make sure more children grow up with the knowledge, understanding, and shared experiences needed to participate fully in a diverse democratic society. 

‘However in order to be sure that community cohesion is embedded in the school life, it needs to be properly inspected. We once again call on the Department for Education and Ofsted to reinstate its inspection of how community cohesion is promoted in schools.

‘Any serious approach to cohesion must also address school admissions. While state-funded faith schools are allowed to select pupils on the basis of religion, the system will continue to separate children from different backgrounds rather than bringing them together.’