Employment in faith schools

Around a third of all state-funded schools in the UK are schools ‘with a religious character’ – the legal term for ‘faith schools’, as they are known in England and Wales, or denominational schools, as they are known in Scotland and Northern Ireland. And many of the 7% of places that are in private schools are in religious schools too.

Despite being funded almost entirely by the public purse, due to a specific exemption to the Equality Act 2010, state-funded faith schools in Britain are permitted to employ, remunerate and promote teachers according to religion, with those of the ‘right’ faith being prioritised over those with other or no religious beliefs. This is true even when a ‘genuine and determining occupational requirement’ (GOR) cannot be determined – something that would be required, in any other job, for religious discrimination to be lawful. One result is that non-religious teachers find that their career prospects are significantly reduced. Teachers can even be disciplined or dismissed for conduct which is considered ‘incompatible with the precepts’ of the school’s religion.

In 2022, the Northern Ireland Assembly unanimously passed legislation to end the religious exemption to anti-discrimination law, meaning that, as of May 2024, it is now unlawful to select, promote or pay teachers on faith grounds in Northern Ireland except where a genuine occupational requirement can be shown. The change happened as a result of a Private Members’ Bill, brought by Alliance MLA Chris Lyttle, which Northern Ireland Humanists supported.

In depth

We don’t think that state schools should be free to select teachers and other staff, or to select governors, according to their religion, and we are concerned that public money is being used to facilitate such discrimination. Ideally, we would like to see a state education system free of religious schools. However, even in a system where such schools are permitted, the current exemptions to equality law that allow faith schools to employ all their teachers on religious grounds are much too broad.

Prior to Brexit, the UK was bound by the European Equality Directive. This only permitted employers to recruit employees on the basis of faith in the ‘very limited circumstances’ where this constitutes a GOR. In other words, religious discrimination was only permitted in circumstances where being of a particular religion is a necessary part of the role. An example of an occupation where religion is a GOR would be a priest. In the context of a faith school, it may include the head teacher or the head of religious education because these roles involve securing the ethos of the school or teaching in line with a particular faith. It would not (at least not usually) include a maths, science, or PE teacher since religion is not central to such roles.

British law is broader – with faith schools permitted to discriminate even when a GOR cannot be maintained. Prior to Brexit this meant that UK law was out of step with EU law (EU law was ‘mistransposed’). However, since 2024, Brexit means that the EU law backstop has fallen away. The Directive can no longer be relied upon to address the loophole.

Voluntary aided (VA) schools and free schools (and academies that were VA schools before becoming academies) are permitted to require all their staff to be religious. Voluntary controlled (VC) schools and foundation schools (and academies that were VC or foundation schools before becoming academies) are not permitted to employ all their staff on faith grounds, but they are allowed to do so for up to a fifth of teaching staff, regardless of whether or not a GOR applies.

In Scotland, the law states that every teacher appointed to any post in a state-funded denominational school must be approved by the relevant church ‘as regards religious belief and character.’ This also applies to promotions. Our sister charity Humanist Society Scotland leads the campaign for employment reform in faith schools in Scotland.

In 2010, long before the Brexit vote, we submitted a formal complaint to the European Commission (EC) about the disparity between the Directive and the Equality Act, triggering an investigation by the EC. The Government had always maintained – publicly and in official guidance – that faith schools can legally require all teachers to share its faith. However, in the course of the investigation, it adopted a different position. It stated that if a teacher was to bring a claim against a school on grounds of discrimination, UK law ‘would, if necessary, be construed and applied by a court or tribunal as permitting preferential decisions on grounds of religious belief, only to the extent that such decisions were consistent with genuine, legitimate and justified occupational requirements.’ In other words, the GOR would apply.

This is at odds with the official guidance and is contrary to the situation as most providers of religious schools understand it. Further, the statement ignored the view of the Court of Justice of the EU (which the UK was bound by at the time) that it is not acceptable for a national government to use domestic courts to resolve differences between Directives and domestic legislation instead of implementing such Directives properly in the first place. Despite this, the EC decided to close the case without resolving the issue, shortly before the Brexit vote was scheduled to take place.

As noted above, it clearly isn’t the case that faith schools can legitimately claim that there is a genuine requirement for every teacher to be of a particular faith. Indeed, according to the 2024 Catholic Education Service (CES) Census, only 43.6% of teachers in Catholic schools identify as Catholic, a figure that drops to just 37% in state-funded secondary schools. However, this does not prevent the CES, which is responsible for roughly 10% of state schools in England, from stipulating in its model recruitment documents and guidance that ‘practising Catholics are eligible to be given preference over applicants who are not Catholic’ for all teaching roles and that senior leadership roles (including the head teacher, deputy head teacher and head of RE) ‘are to be filled by practising Catholics’.

In 2019, we sought to challenge this guidance through the High Court on the grounds that it went beyond the GOR set out in the Directive. However, the application was denied on a legal technicality about whether the CES was a public authority rather than on the merits of the case. Unfortunately, the Court ruled that, despite issuing binding instructions to publicly funded schools regarding who they should employ, the CES was not fulfilling a public function and so could not be judicially reviewed.

By allowing schools to select teachers on the grounds of their religion rather than merit, the exemption is clearly unfair. As has now been acknowledged in Northern Ireland, it also worsens segregation in the school system, and risks children in faith schools receiving lower quality teaching purely to preserve a religious ethos, all at public expense. The governments in Britain should follow Northern Ireland’s lead and eliminate religious discrimination against teachers in all cases where this is not based on a GOR.

What we’re doing

• We continue to challenge the state funding of religious schools through the media.

• We offer support and advice to teachers and other school staff experiencing employment issues with faith schools. In 2026 we highlighted a case of a teacher in Northern Ireland in a controlled school who used a little-known piece of legislation to opt out of delivering RE and collective worship on grounds of conscience. We also used his experience to provide a resource pack for other teachers.

• We have a good working relationship with officials in the UK and Welsh Departments for Education (DfE) and regularly respond to relevant Government consultations, provide briefings and evidence on the issue of non-discriminatory employment practices.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

• In 2021, during the passage of Northern Ireland’s Fair Employment (School Teachers) Bill, we provided briefings to MLAs and responded to the consultation. The Bill received strong support in the Assembly. It was passed in 2022 and came into effect in 2024.

• In 2019, we tried to take a legal challenge against the Catholic Education Service (CES) for the employment guidance it issues saying that schools may discriminate in favour of Catholic applicants for all teaching posts. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Catholic state schools are legally obliged by their trust deeds to follow the guidance, permission to hear the case was denied because the Court said the CES is not fulfilling a public function when it issues this guidance.

• In 2016, we launched our whistleblowing site, Faith Schoolers Anonymous, to provide teachers and other stakeholders (including parents and pupils) with a platform to share their experience of indoctrination, discrimination, and other forms of poor practice in faith schools.

• In July 2012, we triggered a European Commission investigation into employment laws for UK faith schools, although this was, unfortunately, closed shortly before the Brexit referendum. We have also submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament, oral evidence to the Senedd’s Children, Young People, and Education Committee, and contributed to a 2021 Liberty pamphlet, Bringing human rights home, about the issue.

• During the passage of the Education Act 2011, we worked with peers to introduce amendments on employment. And all through the 21st century, we have responded to all relevant UK and Welsh Government consultations on these matters.