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Tory-led Government deleting atheism from schools in England

New Government advice for schools on British values has actually taken out references to non-religious beliefs that appeared in previous versions.

Legally, schools are required to promote the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.’ In 2013, the Department for Education (DfE) published advice stating that, ‘There are many different actions that schools can take to meet this part of the standard, such as: …Use teaching resources from a wide variety of sources to help pupils understand a range of faiths, and beliefs such as atheism and humanism.’However, in updated advice on meeting this same standard, the DfE has removed ‘and beliefs such as atheism and humanism’ from the preceding sentence.

This retrograde step follows closely after a number of academics, teachers, and parents, together with the British Humanist Association (BHA) and the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (REC), condemned the exclusion of study of the non-religious worldview of humanism from new English GCSE and AS and A level criteria published by the Government.

The Government’s motive for the active exclusion of the study, or mention, of non-religious perspectives from schools is not clear. We have deep concerns about this clear inequality and the negative impact on education and social tolerance these moves may have. We have commented previously about the current Government’s agenda to promote religious faith and the anti-secularist and -atheist remarks made by prominent Tory MPs.

We’d like Labour’s education team to tackle this head on and demand that the DfE revise its advice on British values to include references to atheism and humanism again, and to ensure the study of non-religious worldviews is equal to that of religious beliefs.

We are an increasingly diverse and increasingly non-religious population and that is particularly true of younger generations. It makes no sense for the Government to ignore that reality and keep using state education to promote religion.

For more information, see the BHA’s news page.

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Ofsted should be allowed to inspect religious teaching in state faith schools

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary has set out his concerns that ‘Ofsted is not allowed to inspect religious teaching in faith schools‘. The issue of faith schools essentially inspecting themselves when it comes to the content of their religious teaching was discussed when Labour Humanists met with Tristram Hunt MP earlier this year, and this public statement from Dr Hunt is very welcome. What we would like to see is a firm policy proposal from Labour to ensure that religious teaching in faith schools is opened up to the same scrutiny and inspection as all other state schools.

You can listen to the full discussion between Dr Hunt and David Aaronovitch, which was a Progress event on October 28. They discuss various issues relating to faith schools from 21 – 28 minutes.

What’s the issue with RE in faith schools?

There are a number of concerns about what and how RE is taught in state-funded faith schools. The British Humanist Association’s (BHA) education campaigner Richy Thompson blog ‘10 facts about faith schools‘ sets these out. These include:

  • Most don’t have to teach about other religions in Religious Education
  • When they do teach about other religions, they often don’t teach about them properly
  • They don’t have to teach about non-religious people and beliefs
  • Their RE teaching isn’t even inspected by Ofsted. The religious bodies inspect it themselves
  • ‘Faith’ schools do not have to provide much in the way of sex education and can choose to only teach abstinence until marriage

Help the BHA keep campaigning for reform of faith schools.

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Blog News

Fight back against faith schools

Please show your support for inclusive schools by donating whatever you can in support of the British Humanist Association’s (BHA) Faith Schools Campaigner. Each year the BHA, which is a charity reliant on donations and membership fees, fundraises to retain its fantastic Faith Schools Campaigner, who is the only campaigner working full time in opposition to the state funding of faith schools and against religious discrimination in admissions, employment and the curriculum.

Richy Thompson works tirelessly to end the unfair discrimination embedded in the state-funded faith schools system and has helped to make the issue of faith schools a matter of national level debate, as well as providing direct support and advice to parents, teachers, school governors and pupils in local areas. On top of all this, Richy also leads the BHA’s policy work on evolution and creationism, religious education, PSHE and sex and relationships education and collective worship – with a number of notable successes in the past few years.

There is still so much more to be done to have a truly fair, equal and high quality school and education system with no religious discrimination or prejudice. Please donate through the special JustGiving site.

Read more about the BHA’s work on schools and education.

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Events News Uncategorized

‘No Prayer Breakfast’ a secular success at Conference!

We were delighted to hold another successful ‘No Prayer Breakfast’ fringe meeting at Labour Party Annual Conference on 23 September 2014. The event was described by Kelvin Hopkins MP as being his conference highlight when we hold them, and the atmosphere was certainly very positive, especially for 8am!

We worked closely with the British Humanist Association (BHA), to which we are affiliated, to put together the biggest panel of prominent speakers we’ve had so far. Chaired by Naomi Phillips, we heard from:

  • Angela Eagle MP, Chair of the Labour Party and Labour Humanists’ Patron
  • Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive
  • Owen Jones, author, commentator and Chavs author
  • Polly Toynbee, author and journalist
  • Kelvin Hopkins MP, Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group
  • Sunny Hundal, journalist and blogger
  • Tom Copley, Member of the London Assembly

Read what happened on our Storify of the event. You can also read the BHA’s report of their activities at all the Party conferences.

Panel at Labour Conference
(LtoR) Sunny Hundal, Naomi Phillips, Polly Toynbee, Angela Eagle, Tom Copley, Andrew Copson, Kelvin Hopkins (Owen Jones had to leave before this photo was taken!)

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Report from AGM 2014

Labour Humanists held our AGM 2014 at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester on Tuesday 23rd September. Read the Chair’s report and minutes, and the Treasurer’s report.

 

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Labour Humanists’ Chair makes speech to party conference

Very pleased to see Labour’s commitment to education, to a stronger school admissions code, to supporting teachers, to compulsory SRE in every state school.

My constituency party Chipping Barnet supports inclusive schools and the best teachers free to teach in any state school.

That is why Labour needs to go further and address the issue of state-funded faith schools. A third of state schools have a religious character and that number is growing through the Tories’ largely unregulated and growing academies and free schools programme.

Many state funded faith schools can and do select pupils on the basis of the religion of their parents. Labour should strengthen its position to make clear that whether someone believes in god or not, or which god they believe in, should have no bearing on whether their child can access a high quality education at their local school.

Those schools can and do put religious requirements on teaching jobs too. Allowing state funded schools to hire, fire, or set a ceiling on promotion for, suitably qualified teachers on religious grounds, must be at odds to Labour’s commitments to equality and to improving teacher quality.

Where I live, all new primary schools just opened or proposed are religious ones- Jewish and Christian. In 5 years time my daughter will be starting school. As a non-religious person who absolutely shares Labour values of equality and for inclusive high quality education, in 5 years time where should I send my daughter, when my local schools are faith schools, not inclusive, and have religious indoctrination as part of the ethos and curriculum?

Conference, let there be no doubt – our education system is only safe with Labour. Only Labour truly supports teachers. Only Labour fights for every young person to reach their educational potential regardless of their background. That is why I am a member.

And that is why Labour should not ignore or play down the threat to our values of equality and inclusion.
Labour must continue to fight for the right to every young person to have a high quality education at their local school
And we should have a national review of religion in education, ensuring the teaching of non-religious world views such as Humanism equally alongside religious perspectives.
We must look to strengthen out policy and rule out any state funded school from discriminating, selecting and segregating along religious grounds.

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Events News

No Prayer Breakfast & AGM 2014

No Prayer Breakfast Poster

 

Followed by Labour Humanists’ AGM. If you are not already a member, please consider joining us.

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Events News Uncategorized

Should Humanism Matter in Politics?

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LtoR – Maggie Ardiente, American Humanist Association; Tom Copley, London Assembly Member; Julie Pernet, European Humanist Federation; Kerry McCarthy MP, Shadow Foreign Office Minister; Naomi Phillips, Labour Humanists

 

Sunday 10 August at the World Humanist Congress in Oxford kicked off with a political session, ‘Should Humanism Matter in Politics?’ This meeting was packed out with Congress delegates from around the world and was chaired by Labour Humanists’ Naomi Phillips. On the panel were Kerry McCarthy MP (Shadow Foreign Office Minister), Tom Copley AM, Maggie Ardiente (American Humanist Association) and Julie Pernet (European Humanist Federation). All speakers spoke from their personal and professional perspectives about whether Humanism matters in politics, whether there should be more humanists in politics, and if the personal beliefs and life-stances of our elected represented matters should matter.

We’ve been a bit lazy and used Tweets from the European Humanist Federation (thanks!) to describe what happened – see this on Storify.

The meeting was also filmed – we’ll link to that when it is published soon.

Here are some photographs from the event – you can find many more on the World Humanist Congress group on Flickr.

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Tom Copley, London Assembly Member
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Kerry McCarthy MP, Shadow Foreign Office Minister
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Maggie Ardiente, American Humanist Association
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Julie Pernet, European Humanist Federation
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Naomi Phillips, Chair, Labour Humanists

 

 

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Labour’s equality statement to include non-religious people

We are pleased to announce that the recently-adopted equality statement of the Labour Party will now cover non-religious people (including atheists and humanists), having previously only referred to ‘religion’.

Last month Labour’s policy making body – the National Policy Forum (NPF) – agreed an overarching equality statement as a commitment to the way it will implement policies and its manifesto. However, the equality statement appeared not to cover non-religious people and therefore Labour Humanists took action to campaign for the statement to be amended as a matter of urgency.

While we supported the otherwise excellent statement, we made clear to representatives from all major groups in the Labour party that if the statement went ahead as it was written, it would create serious inequalities between religious and non-religious people and could have profound implications for the status of humanists and other non-religious people within and outside of Labour.

Our concern went to Labour’s Joint Policy Committee (JPC), the senior body which has strategic oversight of policy development in the party. JPC officers have agreed a change to the statement to replace ‘religion’ with the term ‘religion or belief’, which includes non-religious people. The revised wording will be published in the equality statement and will be available at, if not before, Labour’s annual conference in September.

We would like to thank Labour Party Chair and Labour Humanists’ Patron Angela Eagle MP for overseeing this process, and to the many members of the National Policy Forum who contacted us to support this important change.

Notes

The equality statement had stated ‘religion’ but omitted ‘or belief’. This went against the letter of the Equality Act 2010 and human rights law, which use the term ‘religion or belief’ to cover both non-religious and religious people. In practice, just using ‘religion’ specifically does not cover humanists or any other person with philosophical beliefs which are not religious.

The revised equality statement:

Labour is the Party of equality. We believe that no person should suffer discrimination or a lack of opportunity because of their gender, gender identity, age, disability, race, religion or belief, socio-economic status or sexual orientation. In government, every decision we take will be taken with that in mind. We will ensure the policies across these eight documents and in our manifesto will be implemented ensuring that they further rather than hinder this cause.

Labour has always led the fight for equality, but our fight is not yet won. We will not rest until everyone can live their lives free from hatred, fear and oppression. In government we will work to remove the structural and social barriers that stand in our way.

For further information contact Naomi Phillips, Chair of Labour Humanists.

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Blog News

World Humanist Congress a huge success

Over 1000 atheist, humanist and other non-religious organisations and activists from over 60 countries from the world gathered in the internationally renowned university city of Oxford  for the World Humanist Congress, hosted by the British Humanist Association (BHA). This was the first time the Congress has been held in the United Kingdom since 1978 and was the the biggest Congress in its history.

Congress celebrated freedom of thought and expression and, on closing the conference, the BHA unveiled the Oxford Declaration on Freedom of Thought and Expression. The Declaration was described by BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson as an ‘urgent manifesto’ for reform and subject to overwhelming popular endorsement on the Congress floor. The Declaration read that ‘The right to freedom of thought and belief is one and the same right for all; no one anywhere should ever be forced into or out of a belief; the right to freedom of expression is global in its scope; there is no right not to be offended, or not to hear contrary opinions; states must not restrict thought and expression merely to protect the government from criticism; and freedom of belief is absolute but the freedom to act on a belief is not.’

Catch up

The World Humanist Congress had many speakers and sessions over three days. The Congress was filmed and those will be available shortly. Many hundreds of photographs are beginning to be uploaded by the BHA and delegates to the World Humanist Congress group on Flickr. You can also catch up with what happened by reading the news reports on the BHA website, searching for #WHC2014 on Twitter, and checking out the Congress Facebook page.

At Congress, Labour Humanists’ chair Naomi Phillips led a session asking ‘Should Humanism matter in politics’ with a truly fantastic panel: Kerry McCarthy MP, Tom Copley AM, Julie Pernet (European Humanist Federation) and Maggie Ardiente (American Humanist Association). We will publish a report of this session soon.