Tag: RE

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Government made an ‘error in law’ over exclusion of humanism from GCSE

Fantastic news from the British Humanist Association (BHA) – a High Court judge has ruled that the Government made an ‘error in law’ when it left out non-religious worldviews such as humanism from the content of GCSE Religious Studies (in the curriculum in England). The BHA supported three non-religious families who wanted to challenge the Government’s moves to relegate non-religious beliefs in the curriculum and helped the parents and their children to bring the case to court. This is a landmark judgement and a real victory for inclusive and balanced education. A huge congratulations to those families and to the BHA. More news on this story below and on their website.

 

BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson said, ‘We have made the case for many decades that the school curriculum on religions should include major non-religious worldviews such as humanism. It is great news that the Court has now said the law is with us. This is a stunning victory for the three humanist families who stood up to the Government on this issue. It is also a victory for the vast majority of people who believe in the importance of a religious education curriculum that is inclusive, balanced, and pluralistic, and which contributes to mutual understanding between people of all religions and none.

‘We look forward to working with the Government to ensure that the changes required by the judgement are implemented and hope they will use this as an opportunity to improve the GCSE for the benefit of all children. Continuing to exclude the views of a huge number of Britons, in the face of majority public opinion and all expert advice, would only be to the detriment of education in this country and a shameful path to follow.’

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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.