Religious state 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. In England in particular, this number has grown since the turn of the century as successive governments have increased the influence of religious groups in the state-funded education system. In Northern Ireland, a new law now requires the Department of Education to meet the demand for integrated schools that educate children from different backgrounds together. But all schools, including integrated schools, still have a Christian ethos. It is therefore impossible for parents in Northern Ireland to secure a place at a fully inclusive school for their children.

The proliferation of faith schools, especially those with religiously selective admissions policies, makes it difficult for families to get their children into local schools. But it also means that children who are admitted receive one-sided faith-based teaching that fails to adequately respect their freedom of religion or belief. In some areas (particularly rural areas), there are only faith schools. Nevertheless, policymakers in England and Wales often allow new faith schools to open in these areas. What’s more, laws favouring religious provision mean faith schools typically take precedence over inclusive schools during closures and amalgamations, further reducing the availability of inclusive school places.

We aim for a secular state guaranteeing human rights, with no privilege or discrimination on grounds of religion or belief, and so we campaign against faith schools and for an inclusive school system where children and young people of all different backgrounds and beliefs can learn with and from each other. We challenge faith schools’ admissions, employment and curriculum policies, as well as the privileged processes by which new faith schools continue to open.

We also work to improve regulation around private and ‘illegal’ faith schools to ensure the rights and interests of children are protected in these settings.

In depth

Parents have an explicit right in the European Convention of Human Rights to bring up their children in the religion or belief of their choice without illegitimate interference from the state. However, this does not mean that parents can demand public funding for whatever type of education they prefer and there is no right to confessional religious teaching or faith schools that are in line with their own beliefs.

We do not think that state schools should be allowed to choose pupils based on religion, discriminating in access to a public service that should be open to all. We don’t think that state schools should be free to select teachers and other staff, or to select governors, according to their religion. The proliferation of state-funded religious schools is making for a more segregated future. When studies show that religious selection of pupils also results in wealth-based selection, we think the social case against religious schools is even stronger.

Faith schools are uniquely privileged in law in school organisation – in some cases being able to open outside of competition with other proposals, ‘by the back door’, as well as having a privileged position in discussions around school closures and amalgamations. This was demonstrated in 2021 in Somerset where the High Court upheld a decision by the local council to merge a Church of England school and a school without a religious character into a single Church of England primary. This was even though this would mean there are now no non-Christian schools in the area and this has disadvantaged non-Christians, particularly the non-religious. Similar cases have happened in Guildford and Great Yarmouth.

We want to see an end to the proliferation of state-funded faith schools. We want a progressive withdrawal of their privileges and exemptions so that religious schools are eventually absorbed back into the wider schools sector, becoming inclusive schools for the whole community.

Academies and free schools

Since they were first introduced in the early 2000s, over 80% of secondary schools and over 45% primary schools have become academies or free schools (new academies). These are state schools but they receive their funding directly from central government rather than via the local authority. They also have greater autonomy over their admissions, curriculum, and employment practices. Academies are run by academy trusts. When these trusts consist of several schools these are known as multi-academy trusts (MATs).

The Church of England to a vast extent and to a lesser extent the Catholic Church have used the academies programme to take control of community schools with no religious character that convert to academy status. This caused particular issues in 2019, when a non-religious family was forced to bring a legal challenge against the CofE trust that ran their children’s community ethos school over the way collective worship was conducted and the lack of a meaningful alternative for the non-religious. The trust eventually backed down and agreed to provide alternative assemblies, but the case illustrates how faith-based governance can affect the ethos and character of schools with no religious character.

Back in 2013, the Church of England said that it aimed to gain 200 new schools in the next five years. In 2007, its ambition was a comparatively modest 100 new schools in the next ten years. The proposals to remove the 50% cap on religiously selective admissions in religious free schools (first floated by Theresa May’s government in 2016 and then again by Rishi Sunak’s government in 2024) was also motivated by an ambition to increase the number of Catholic schools, despite strong evidence that increased faith-based selection damages individuals, families, and society.

Humanists UK doesn’t have a policy on academies per se, as the question is outside its policy remit. But moving faith schools to a faith-based MAT often leads to stronger religious influence as rules about the composition of trusts mean less governance by stakeholders with an investment in individual schools (like parents and teachers) than in other types of school. Dioceses also have more direct control over what is taught.

Integrated schools, shared schools, and school twinning

One of the most lucid examples of the harm that religious segregation can do to society is that of Northern Ireland. Despite the Good Friday Agreement including a commitment to ‘encourage and facilitate’ integrated education, currently, most children from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds are educated separately, with those from Catholic backgrounds attending maintained (Catholic) schools and those from Protestant backgrounds attending controlled (de facto Protestant) schools. There are an increasing number of integrated schools, which seek to balance the proportion of pupils from different communities by admitting roughly 40% from Catholic families, 40% from Protestant families, and 20% from families with other religions or non-religious beliefs.

However, at present, only 7% of schools in Northern Ireland are integrated. And, although this proportion should increase following the introduction of the Integrated Education Act 2022 this only requires the Department of Education to attempt to meet demand for integrated schools, not to promote them over other types of school. This is despite the fact that nearly 70% of people in Northern Ireland think that integrated education should be ‘the main model’ for the education system.

Every school in Northern Ireland is a Christian school, teaching a Christian RE curriculum. The 93% of schools that are not integrated are either Catholic or de facto Protestant. Even the integrated schools are Christian – they are just pan-Christian. That nevertheless makes them more desirable to non-religious families. But with only 20% of places in the 7% of schools that are integrated set aside for those from non-Christian backgrounds, this represents just 1.5% of all school places. The 2024 NI Life and Times Survey found that 30% of adults of parent age belong to no religion.

Despite these problems, and the high level of support for more integrated schools, in 2025 the current Education Minister rejected plans of two schools in North Downs to become integrated. In a subsequent legal case brought by the schools against the decision, a judge ruled in favour of the Minister’s decision, arguing that – despite 80% of parents across the schools supporting the plans – there was little evidence of demand for integration from the Catholic community. This pointed back to the aim to have 40% of places allocated to Catholic families. There may be an appeal. If the decision is not overturned, this suggests that the current law is deficient, in terms of the place quota. The needs of the non-religious have been marginalised again.

Meanwhile, in England, in a response to the proposed removal of the 50% cap in 2016, the UK Government suggested a range of alternative proposals for integration between schools. These included school ‘linking’ or ‘twinning’ and ‘social mixing outside school… where there are limited opportunities for meaningful social mixing within school’. Similar ideas have been suggested in Northern Ireland. While neither of these ‘alternatives’ to inclusive school admissions are unhelpful in themselves, we believe that educating children from different backgrounds alongside each other for the entirety of their schooling is vastly superior to holding the odd joint lesson, assembly, school trip, or sports match.

What we’re doing

• We closely monitor proposals for new schools, school closures, and amalgamations and, wherever possible, work with local parents and communities to challenge the proliferation of faith schools and advocate for inclusive provision. We continue to challenge the state funding of faith schools through the media.
• We regularly support local campaigns against proposed new faith schools, as well as to make existing ones more inclusive. We are supporting parents in Bristol in their campaign against the merger of Hotwells Primary School, the only school of no-religious character in the local area, with Church England-designated Cathedral Primary School. In 2024 we supported a campaign of parents, governors, and education trade unions against the proposed merger of two primary schools in Southwark. The proposal would have seen Charlotte Sharman Primary School, a school of no religious character, being merged with St Jude’s Church of England Primary School, and the area losing its only non-faith primary school. While the plan to merge these schools was dropped, Southwark Council later decided to close Charlotte Sharman entirely.
• We advise and support parents who are experiencing difficulties securing a good school place for their children as a result of religious selection, as well as those who have been allocated places at faith schools against their wishes, or are facing other problems relating to the curriculum or practices of these schools. We do this via our parents’ guides for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland and by providing bespoke advice where necessary. In these guides, we provide tables describing the types of religious school in each nation, explaining their privileges and exemptions. For English schools, we also maintain comprehensive data on how many of each of these types of school there are as well as how many pupils attend each type of school.
• We have a good working relationship with officials in the UK and Welsh Departments for Education (DfE) and regularly respond to relevant Government consultations, and provide briefings and evidence on the issue of faith schools.
• In Northern Ireland, we are working alongside other groups, such as Parents for Inclusive Education NI, to campaign for a more inclusive school system.

Appendix: Past work on this issue

• Following the launch of a new funding scheme for voluntary aided religious schools in 2019, we worked with local activists in Peterborough and Kingston upon Thames to oppose new fully selective faith schools. Although both of these schools were eventually given the green light, the scheme was later quietly abandoned by the Conservative government. Since 2010 other local campaign work has included supporting a legal challenge in Richmond-upon-Thames, as well as additional campaigns in Kingston, Malton, the Isle of Wight, Solihull, Surrey and Somerset.

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

• We have also made a number of legal challenges to the continuing presence and role of faith schools in British society. In 2012 we took a (disappointingly unsuccessful) judicial review of the decision to open two highly discriminatory Catholic schools in Richmond-upon-Thames.

• In 2013, we won an Information Tribunal case against the UK Government over its refusal to publish a list of the names, locations and religions of groups applying to set up free schools which, as a result, are now published automatically during each wave of applications.

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

• We also campaign against new religious free schools. We are particularly concerned that the additional freedoms that academies and free schools enjoy around admissions, employment, and the curriculum allow them to religiously discriminate more than was previously possible in state-funded schools, and that a wider diversity of state-funded faith schools are opening.