Daily Mail reports on a primary school which is facing “…a parent’s revolt over the content of sex education classes for children as young as four.” The article leads with the headline, Parents rebel over lessons on sex for pupils aged four and plans to teach homosexuality to six-year-olds.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2062249/Parents-rebel-lessons-sex-pupils-aged-furious-plans-teach-homosexuality-year-olds.html#ixzz1dyUc8JtP

Richy Thompson describes a typical day in the office

Richy Thompson

Richy is the British Humanist Association’s Campaigns Officer (Faith Schools and Education) and the UK’s only dedicated campaigner against ‘faith’ schools. The BHA is currently fundraising to support the post for 2012. Please donate today at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools

It’s been a while since I’ve written an article for HumanistLife. The previous two were both written when I was President of the AHS, before I started working as the BHA’s ‘faith’ schools campaigner. I’ve been in this job for slightly over four months now, and I thought it’d be interesting to talk about some of the things I get up to by exploring a typical day – yesterday.

I started the day doing our internal media review, replying to some queries from parents about collective worship, worked in support of local campaigns against ‘faith’ schools, and navigating creationist attack mail. The first big thing I looked at was an email I had received from a member of Milton Keynes Humanists, who I had arranged last week to attend a public meeting being held by anti-choice group, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), in association with a number of local Muslim groups. SPUC’s “Safe at School” campaign works against good Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in state-funded schools, particularly focussing on the primary level. Our local member took extensive notes, which should prove very helpful in understanding their tactics. We had another member at their Wakefield meeting last night, who I’m looking forward to hearing more from shortly.

After that, I spent a while investigating a tip-off I had received about a bid from some creationists for a Free School. The bid, on the surface, appears to be from an evangelical Christian group that has nothing to do with creationism, but someone who had met them found that the leadership privately holds creationist beliefs, and intends to ‘teach creation and evolution, but not creationism’ – whatever that means. A number of evangelical groups have bid for Free Schools – more evangelical than any group already providing state-funded education – and serious questions need to be asked about what these groups actually believe, and what they intend to teach, about all sorts of things, not just creationism. I imagine many will have seen the negative publicity that Everyday Champions Church’s bid has attracted, and decided to mask their true colours, perhaps even from the Department for Education. With regards to this particular bid, we’re considering appropriate further steps.

The Education Bill finished its Committee Stage in the House of Lords yesterday, and we’re busy preparing for the Report Stage. Our aim for the law to be changed to put an end to discrimination against teachers and pupils and, really importantly, to stop the huge proliferation of new ‘faith’ schools of all different denominations that we are seeing. We worked with peers in the All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group to get a wide range of amendments tabled during Committee Stage, and during Report Stage we’ll be looking to take a number of these forward for further debate, though perhaps tightening the focus on some in response to what was said during Committee Stage. So yesterday I prepared an internal document where for each of the amendments debated, I looked at what we wanted, what was said, what the Government’s response was, and what I would recommend for further action at the next stage.

Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of work lately around Standing Advisory Councils for Religious Education (SACREs). About half of the 151 SACREs in England and the 22 in Wales have a humanist as a member, but ideally we’d like to see that expanded to all of them. Yesterday we gained three new humanist reps. One of them, Zelda Bailey, I arranged to observe a meeting of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets’ SACRE  last week, and she attended that first meeting this week. At the meeting they happened to be putting the finishing touches on the RE Syllabus for the borough, and she found that it didn’t mention the non-religious in any way. Thanks to her last minute interventions, she was able to add “secular worldviews” to the religions and beliefs to be studied each year in Tower Hamlets’ community, voluntary controlled and foundation schools, and most of the Academies – therefore meaning that thousands of children should now learn about non-religious beliefs such as atheism, agnosticism and humanism, when they otherwise wouldn’t have done. New RE syllabuses are only agreed once every five years, so Zelda’s appearance at the meeting was particularly well-timed! And the meeting finished with her being unanimously voted onto the SACRE as a co-opted member.

I finished the day looking at the Humanist SACRE Reps handbook, and how we can improve it to help further instruct all reps in how they can best carry out their role on their SACREs, and doing some preparation for a talk I’m giving to King’s College London Atheist, Humanist and Secular Society I’m giving next week.

All in all, I think this is a really great, tremendously interesting job, but also a hugely important and highly unique one – there’s no-one else in the country (perhaps the world?) working full time to abolish ‘faith’ schools, and yet many non-religious people in the UK would agree that education is the single biggest area in which we are disadvantaged due to our lack of belief.

I would very much like to continue this job, and I think it’s really vital that the British Humanist Association continues to employ a ‘faith’ schools campaigner. So please donate to our JustGiving appeal at http://www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools so that this work can continue.

A proposed ‘free school’ for Cradley Heath in the Black Country is criticised by a local senior councillor. Councillor Tim Crumpton isn’t exactly a fan of ‘free schools’ in general, describing them as “a project of Michael Gove’s imagination”. But he explains that he’s done some digging and it shouldn’t be ignored. Some basic research unearths some religious affiliations, unstated by the trust which wants to run the school, and an odd relationship with the Muslim education expert who’s supposed to be its Chair of the Governors, but doesn’t know that he is.

[Councillor Crumpton said:] “There are some glaring errors in the literature, for instance they refer to a ‘Ministry for Education’ when in the UK there is no such thing.

Cllr Crumpton also contacted the lecturer that is listed as Chair of Governors on the Free School’s website, Dr Ian Williams, who specialises in Muslim education.

In an email to Cllr Crumpton Dr Williams seemed to baulk at the idea of being Chair of Governors, he said: “I am involved in the Free School project though not as clearly defined as the web-site indicates.”

Cllr Crumpton said: “I find it strange that the academic lending his name to the project is an expert in Muslim studies and seems to point that this will in fact be a faith school, which is mentioned nowhere in the literature.

“They talk about a 4plus1 Education Philosophy and there is next to nothing on the internet about this except a religious school somewhere in America.”

“Free schools are a project of Michael Gove’s imagination and I firmly believe they have no place in Dudley borough.”

A spokesperson for the trust denies that the school would be a ‘faith’ school and said, “We have the credentials to do this as our teaching team and governors, which Dr Williams agreed to be chair, has decades and decades of experience in the education system.”

A public consultation meeting is being held at Cradley Liberal Club on Sunday, May 15 (2pm to 5pm).

Link: http://www.halesowennews.co.uk/news/8998671.Furious_row_erupts_over_proposed_free_school_in_Cradley/

Last week the Bishop of Oxford, newly appointed head of the Church of England’s education board, made a few waves by seeming to accept the C of E ‘faith’ schools get their good results through social selection (wealthier families = better results, a well-established, well-evidenced formula) and suggested that he’d like to see children from C of E backgrounds  at just 10% of the intake in C of E ‘faith’ schools.

The London Evening Standard reports that Bishop Pritchard’s comments have been “hailed” as a welcome move against discrimination.

The move would be a major shift for the Church, and it could also lead to an end to the practice of parents attending church to secure their child a school place.

Under current admissions rules faith schools can choose how to allocate places, for example to followers of their faith, if they are over-subscribed.

… Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, chairman of Accord, which campaigns to end religious discrimination in school staffing and admissions, said: “This is a very welcome step that attempts to help rectify current policy, which means that religion and discrimination in schools have become almost synonymous.

“Schools should be inclusive and tolerant and no state-funded school should be allowed to discriminate on the grounds of religion for any of their teacher posts or any pupil places.”

Link: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23943839-church-school-admission-plan-hailed.do

The Telegraph, on the other hand, is not so vicariously enamoured. Their headline: “Bishop under fire over quota plan for church schools”.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8468583/Bishop-under-fire-over-quota-plan-for-church-schools.html

The British Humanist Association took the Bishop’s comments as a “welcome” step in the right direction, but – as members of Accord and as campaigners against ‘faith’ schools in their own right and on principle – said it doesn’t go far enough.

David Michael, from Great Bernera off the west coast of the Isle of Lewis, has accepted a £1,000 compensation payment and more than £1400 in costs from Western Isles Council following a legal battle over the religious content in his son’s education and the manner in which they treated his complaint.

Overly religious elements in lessons about Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, and a planned trip to a Bible exhibition, had prompted the initial enquiries. The state-funded school is not even a ‘faith’ school, having “integrated community” status. But the school appeared, according to Mr Michael, inflexible in how it would handle his objections, unnecessarily extending his request to be removed from RE to other areas of school activities at a detriment to his son.

In a subsequent letter from Kirsteen Maclean, the school’s headteacher, he was told that removing his son, Anton, from religious education would have wider implications.

“Withdrawal from RE would also include him being withdrawn from all school assembly occasions and Christmas activities,” she said.

Link: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/council-pays-out-in-school-religion-row-1.1096037

The out-of-court settlement means that no liability has been accepted by the local authority and no legal precedent has been set.

Mr Michael has said he will donate the compensation money back to the school.

Sarfraz Manzoor, who wrote last year about his own family’s objections to his marriage to a “white non-Muslim” woman and the aftermath, this week provides a rather less personal write-up of a scheme run in Luton, exposing no less a cutting example of racial divide.

In the scheme, religiously and ethnically segregated children from different schools were brought together… for one afternoon. Half the children came from a Catholic school and were petty much entirely white, the other half from predominantly Muslim families and were all Asian, bar one black pupil. The second school is a community school, not a Muslim ‘faith’ school, but of course when pupils sharing some characteristics pool in one school in an area then there are always going to be corresponding effects on the remaining community schools, regardless of their admissions policies or “ethos”.

Manzoor accepts that “the very fact that Luton felt it needed this project suggests that the town has a real, and not only perceived, challenge on its hands”. But the overall tone is irony-free. Manzoor seems pleased with the “pioneering initiative” and talks about how the children quickly overcome fear and suspicion across a racial and religious divide by playing simple games (the article’s title is “Catholic and Muslim pupils find they have a lot in common”).  That the massive town-wide segregation of children by ethnicity and religion mandates something like the “Schools Linking Network initiative” in the first place seems to go entirely under the radar. There’s no explicit criticism of the fact that the school system itself is pulling the town’s children into perceptibly tribal camps from the outset.

Luton has become media shorthand for the failures of multiculturalism, having been both home to the Muslim extremists who jeered at British soldiers returning from Iraq and the birthplace for the extreme right English Defence League, which recently marched through the town. St Joseph’s, a faith school that is 49% white British, and William Austin, which is only 2.4% white British, are one of 10 pairs of contrasting schools that have been linked up.

… Hassan from William Austin admits he was a bit nervous at the start of the day because he has “never really met any Christians”. He is surprised to learn the children from St Joseph’s are more similar to him than he imagined. “I thought they’d be totally different – like a different kind of person, but actually they like the same football teams and the same food.”

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/12/school-twinning-catholic-muslim

The overall impression from the article itself is hopeful, in that the children are able to overcome divides that many adults wilfully allow to fester for generation after generation, but the impression from the wider context is tragic, in that these ten pairs of “contrasting” schools are ingraining such notions of alien people in the first place. How much harder will it be to bridge the gap between the same children again when they are teenagers, or later as suspicious adults, after years of their minds being narrowed by the social filters built into their very education?

If you’re going to cut something, why not abolish religious admissions criteria altogether, then you wouldn’t have to pay for sticking plaster “Linking” initiatives down the line after years of social disharmony.

Some responses to the latest “atheism in RE” story are unintentionally hilarious. Chris Theobald has a laugh.

The Sun's big shiny headline on an old story

The news that Humanism will be included in the new RE syllabus in a local authority in Lancashire from September has elicited a number of reactions in the media this week.

The Daily Express warns us of ‘Lessons in Atheism’ for young children. The move is  opposed by Councillor Salim Mulla, chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, who is concerned not to ‘confuse’ children. Only religious people have values so it’s better to force chidlren to adopt whatever belief their parents first give them, apparently:

I don’t think it is right. People are born into faiths and are brought up in that faith and that’s how it should stay. The non-faith beliefs send a wrong message to the children and confuse them. Values are very, very important. I don’t think the non-God aspect should be introduced into the curriculum.

However, those campaigning for inclusive RE lessons find an unlikely ally in Rev Kevin Logan of the Christian People’s Alliance quoted in the Daily Mail:

It is quite a change but it is completely right to recognise atheism and humanism.

I am certainly not worried about Christianity. It can stand against any belief and come out in a good light.

But perhaps our favourite perspective comes in the Sun from a Catholic priest from the Blackburn area, Father Michael Lavin, who stated with no apparent sense of irony:

I think that four years old is too young to be learning about atheism, at that age they hardly know what Christianity is.

It is difficult to get youngsters to understand theology and spiritual concepts. Children tend to struggle when you are making the first Holy Communion.

Father Lavin and others seem to fail to understand that for many parents and indeed current pupils, this news story will appear wholly curious. The study of Humanism has been a feature of school RE for at least four decades and first appeared in a local syllabus in the early 1970s. The Sun refers this week to “Double Atheism”, as if Atheism was going to be studied as a full, timetabled subject in and of itself, like Geography or Physics. In reality of course, it’s just about including secular views as some minimal balance against an overwhelming religious RE. Today, most of the 152 local syllabuses in this country include the study of the humanist view of life. True, that doesn’t always mean it’s taught, or taught well. But far from being an anomaly, consensus is building that any RE which fails to teach about non-religious perspectives, is missing something pretty big.

A recent poll carried out by the British Humanist Association found that when asked the leading question: ‘what is your religion’, a question designed to measure weak cultural affiliation, 38% of people in England and Wales say they have ‘no religion’. According to 2004 DfES Research Report 564, some 65% of 12-19 year olds do not describe themselves as belonging to a religion.

Learning about the non-religious answers to big philosophical questions alongside religious ones contributes to the development of pupils’ own views and educates them about the beliefs of millions of their fellow citizens. It ensures that students that are from non-religious families or who are not religious themselves are able to feel fully included in discussions around ethics and morality.

Chris Theobald is a campaigns volunteer for the British Humanist Association.

The British Humanist Association supports local SACRE representatives, for example in local authority areas where non-religious views are still excluded from religion or belief education.

The Christian Institute is pushing their latest report (although the press release on their site has no links or other means of obtaining it). The press release launches right in:

Shocking sex education materials are being pushed by public bodies for use in schools with children as young as five, a new report reveals. The report is launched today (Wed. 9 March) in the midst of a coalition Government review of sex education guidance.

One resource encourages pupils aged five and over to learn about anal intercourse, oral sex and prostitution. Another helps five year olds to identify the clitoris, and another tells seven year olds that sex is like tickling or skipping. An educational video produced by the BBC featuring full frontal nudity of adults is being pushed to children aged as young as seven.

Christian Institute describes some of the information as “obviously unsuitable”, but it’s apparently not so obvious to all the teachers, retailers, award-winning authors, councils and parents using the material in a thoughtful educational setting.

Its [Christian Institute] report, Too Much, Too Young, criticises, among others, a BBC teaching pack for its images of a nude man and woman and the children’s book Mummy Laid an Egg, by Babette Cole, for its child-like drawings of a man and woman having sex on a skateboard and wearing red noses. The book won British Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year.

A number of councils have recommended the books and lesson plans to schools in their area. The institute said many parents would be “deeply upset” to find these images were being shown to their children.

Other teaching packs criticised in the report contain short explanations of bisexuality, anal intercourse and oral sex.

A Mortarboard blog post by Justin Hancock of bishUK.com gets a bit more explicit about how the Christian Institute report exaggerates the nature of both the teaching and the resources.

If I wasn’t working in SRE, and if I had a child of primary school age, and if I were to read this report without any critical viewing whatsoever, then I’d probably be a little scared and worried about what my child might be taught.

The report repeatedly refers to sex education rather than sex and relationships education, and it cherrypicks examples from resources that refer to sexual body parts and sexual acts.

What it ignores is that sexual anatomy and descriptions of sexual acts are only a very small part of a broad and comprehensive SRE programme, especially at primary school age.

Children need to know how their bodies work; that touching, for example, the clitoris can feel nice; that some touching is appropriate and some isn’t; that adults have sex and what that means; that some people love people of the same sex. A good SRE programme might include this material in primary school (at the appropriate age), but it certainly would not include only this.

… Teachers know what level of understanding their pupils are at and they are often the best judge of what materials are appropriate. They use their professional judgment now, and, even if SRE does become compulsory, they will do so in the future. The resources recommended by local authorities and the Sex Education Forum are just that, recommendations.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2011/mar/09/sex-education-more-than-body-parts

The British Humanist Association is committed to encouraging informed and responsible choice, and as such believes that all children should be entitled to full and accurate age appropriate Sex and Relationships Education (SRE), including unbiased information on contraception, STDs, abortion, sexual orientation, and the many forms of family relationship conducive to individual fulfilment and the stability of society.

Monday’s Dispatches programme on Channel 4 is, for some reason, still not available to view online on the usual Dispatches page at the time of writing. The documentary featured scenes filmed undercover appearing to depict teachers and other adults (sometimes visiting) in Islamic independent schools  hitting children and delivering hateful messages about non-Muslims, encouraging the children to shun non-Muslims and even Muslims deemed not Muslim enough.

The BHA responded by pointing out that the problems in the schools reflect wider concerns and stand to be replicated in new ‘free schools’. New education campaigns officer, Jenny Pennington, commented, ’It is very worrying that a school that has been given a clean bill of health in this area from inspectors can teach young children abhorrent, intolerant views about people of other religions and non-religious beliefs. The evidence presented by the documentary is especially concerning at a time when the Government is moving to give state funded schools much greater autonomy over their curriculum whilst actually proposing to reduce the scope of Ofsted inspections.’

The usual anonymous idiots have threatened to fire-bomb the building (as if the bricks and mortar are to blame, and as if that’s going to solve anything). One of the schools will complain to Ofcom claiming that the footage was selectively chosen and/or out of context. A man shown physically striking children at the school has already been arrested.

Police have arrested a man concerning alleged assaults on children at a mosque after viewing a Channel 4 documentary screened on Monday.

Dispatches, Lessons in Hate and Violence, secretly filmed a man apparently hitting and kicking children during Qu’ran lessons at a school in the Markazi Jamia mosque at Keighley, West Yorkshire.

An Islamic school in Birmingham in the same documentary, where a preacher was filmed making offensive remarks about non-Muslims, said it would close early for half-term, amid fears pupils could be the target of far-right groups.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/feb/14/mosque-schools-arrest-channel-4

BBC Radio 4′s Beyond Belief this week featured British Humanist Association Chief Exec Andrew Copson. The programme was a ‘faith’ schools-themed edition. Andrew explained that admissions and employment policies do indeed discriminate,  that many schools with religious character do not follow parts of the curriculum, that (not necessarily deliberate) socio-economic segregation is inflated by ‘faith’ schools, and that with ethnic segregation at least implicit in much of the division occurring in ‘faith’ schools they are “storing up social problems for the future”.

You can listen again: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006s6p6

Read more on BHA campaigns on religion and schools.

An evangelical church, which intends to teach creationism as part of its science curriculum, has submitted a proposal to open a free school in Nottinghamshire.

The Everyday Champions Church in Newark handed its plans to open a 625-pupil secondary school in the area to the Department for Education last week.

… Pastor Gareth Morgan, the church leader and the driving force behind the free school bid, confirmed that creationism would be taught across the curriculum, should the school be given the green light.

… According to the British Humanist Association (BHA), seven out of 10 free school applications have a faith-based ethos.

BHA head of public affairs Naomi Phillips said schools such as the Everyday Champions Academy reaffirmed the association’s concerns over free schools.

“This type of school holds up our fear from when Michael Gove first put forward his proposals – that they would be schools with faith-based and sometimes extreme views that would largely be applying to take over the running of our state-funded schools,” Ms Phillips said.

“This is despite Michael Gove saying that the Government would protect against creationists and other extreme religions … It’s clear there are no such protections in place.”

Full story: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6069260

The British Humanist Association has consistently opposed state-funded ‘faith’ schools for many years.

Indoctrinating children in faith schools, even when you tell them not to.

An irate father who withdrew his young son from school after discovering that he was reciting prayers is considering further action against the school for “not sticking to its agreement”.

Martijn Leenheer said he was “shocked” to accidentally discover five-year-old Finn had been reciting prayers several times a day at Drumlease Primary School in Dromahair, Co Leitrim, despite the fact that his parents had opted out of Catholic religious instruction for their child.

Finn now attends the Educate Together school in Sligo. But his father, who has outlined his case to the Irish Human Rights Commission, is considering taking his complaint to the Equality Authority or the Ombudsman for Children.

“I feel the school didn’t respond to my concerns and they are still not responding to me.

“My belief is that the school should be responsible for supervising children if they want to opt out because the way it stands at the moment, they ask me if I want to opt out, I say, ‘yes’ and basically nothing happens,” he told the Irish Independent.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/father-removes-son-from-school-over-prayers-15065286.html#ixzz1CEmcQsAc

A former journalist recounts her experience as a teacher in the Egyptian capital.

In my first week as a teacher, I was given a list of my pupils. Each had a letter in the column beside his or her name, either a C or an M. Nada and Daniel and Sara were Cs. Other students – I believe the rest of them – were Ms.

I didn’t pay much attention to this, except perhaps to the novelty of it. Perhaps I assumed that these letters were meant to increase teacher sensitivity around the holidays. I certainly didn’t see it as a fundamental division in a country growing more and more divided along criss-crossing fault lines of suburban and urban, Muslim and Christian, private- and government-school educated.

A decade has passed, and my eldest son is now in school with a letter appended to his name. A bomb has gone off at an Alexandria church. People have been shot; one man was allegedly beaten to death during interrogation; others were imprisoned for protesting against the situation. The letter next to a child’s name, C or M, has taken on a different dimension.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/24/egypt-christian-muslim-religious-sectarianism

The Guardian’s “Comment is free” pages ask the questions about compulsory, collective, “broadly Christian” worship in schools. Remember it’s not just ‘faith’ schools but even state-run comprehensives that are meant to perform these divisive daily acts in assemblies and wotnot. (As the Guardian points out, the BHA campaigns for a repeal of required collective worship, so that assemblies can talk about values and explore philosophy and belief in a more inclusive way.)

All schools are required by law to have an act of worship of “wholly or mainly Christian character” every day. Almost all don’t. So what should be done about this? The British Humanist Association and the National Secular Society want the requirement abolished entirely. There is a very small lobby in favour of enforcing it exactly as it stands.

There are, perhaps, two questions to distinguish here. Should there be any kind of daily collective affirmation of values in a school? There is a large apathetic party that would argue against this. And how particular should these values be, and how much should they be allowed to vary between schools? Obviously the values of an explicitly humanist school would differ from those of an explicitly Catholic or Muslim one.

The question is asked: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/10/schools-christian-worship-state-role

(Not that there are ‘humanist’ schools as such in the UK.)

Cif’s first featured response is from “Mouse” of Church Mouse blog.

Mouse reckons that the law should be changed to end the mandatory worship requirement. Instead, schools should be required to allow faith organisations to establish voluntary clubs.

Mouse speaks: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/10/religious-experience-schools

It seems Mouse doesn’t like the BHA very much. On the one hand the furry critter’s suggestion could actually sound a bit like the BHA’s policy (PDF) which allows for some “‘reasonable accommodations’ to meet the legitimate wishes of religious pupils and their parents”… but probably wouldn’t stretch to regular trips from just any organisation calling itself religious to “voluntarily” siphon off pupils into divisive little groups during school hours. After all, if religious practice was really optional and delivered by external organisations, then why shouldn’t it be outside school time? During school hours we can then focus on the beliefs and values that pupils are more likely to share together. That’s a thought echoed by today’s response from New Humanist editor, Caspar Melville.

In the interests of honesty, clarity and simplicity I support the British Humanist Association’s call for the government to withdraw the statuary guidance on collective worship currently in place, and produce new guidance about how to conduct school assemblies, focusing on shared values appropriate to our polyglot multicultural society, with lots of flexibility so that heads can adapt to their local circumstances. Most schools do an admirable job of ignoring the law and have rebranded and desanctified dreary Christian rituals (this year my son’s brilliant Christmas play was called CinderAbba, you can imagine why), but we should remove the threat of them being penalised for this, and protect young people from overzealous religionists in the future by rationalising the rules now.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jan/12/religion-morality

Marilyn Mason has some good news from South West London Humanists

Marilyn Mason

South West London Humanists this week celebrated the success of their North Kingston campaign for inclusive education and against a proposed new secondary school being run by the Church of England when the Office of the Schools Adjudicator announced its decision in favour of a bid to manage the school from Kingston Education Trust, a consortium of Kingston Council, Kingston University and the local FE College.

SWLH found much support from local parents for an inclusive neighbourhood school that would not discriminate against their children on religious grounds. A key role for humanists was to point out what local people often didn’t know and weren’t being told by supporters of the Diocese bid:

• how much influence the Church would have over the school’s admissions policy for its very small financial investment;
• that, whatever the Diocese were saying about admissions, policies could change and the school become more religiously selective in future years;
• and that the fact that  many local parents sent their children to Church primary schools demonstrated only, for historic reasons, that there were a great many of them within walking distance, not that parents were committed to faith-based education and demanding its continuation at secondary level.

Campaigning started early, even before there was an alternative bid to the Church one, with a petition on the Council website, which eventually attracted 255 signatures, asking the council to ensure an inclusive school. From then on we used every opportunity to keep the arguments in the public eye and to encourage alternative bids to manage the school by sending out press releases, writing letters to local papers and referring reporters and editors to the BHA and Accord websites if they wanted additional material. Local headlines included: “Faith in our schools?”; “Battle rages as church vies for school control”; “Humanists’ fears over school places”; and, my personal favourite, when the Diocesan bid was formally announced, “God for bid”.

We used local demographics and the pressing need for a non-selective neighbourhood school in Kingston to support our case, and we were always careful to attack religious privilege and discrimination rather than religious belief – though others who wrote letters to local papers (on both sides) were less temperate. Via our monthly newsletter we kept SWLH members updated and encouraged them to write their own letters to the local media, councillors and MP. We offered them some arguments, both local and general, and provided the addresses of local papers, but did not provide standard letters or postcards, as individually expressed letters are far more effective. There were over 30 letters in the local press opposing faith schools during the campaign, not all from SWLH members – more numerous, and on the whole better argued, than those from Church supporters. Our chair, Jeremy Rodell, was tireless in maintaining a civilised discussion and campaign and correcting inaccuracies and misinformation in the local press.

We also responded to consultations individually and collectively, attended the local consultation meeting and held a public meeting of our own with James Gray of the British Humanist Association speaking persuasively for inclusive schools. According to a reporter at the local paper, the Diocese is now claiming that SWLH packed the public consultation meeting with humanists; in fact we would have had problems packing such a large meeting and most of those present and speaking against the Church bid were unknown to us – just local concerned parents. Before the end of the consultation period, we leafleted local primary schools, helped by some keen local parents.

We were also helped by the majority (Lib Dem) party on the local council wanting the Kingston Education Trust bid to succeed, and by having some friendly contacts amongst local councillors who seemed glad that we could campaign more freely than they could. Local Conservative councillors and MP Zac Goldsmith, while probably keener on the Church school bid, tended to sit on the fence and say they wanted whatever local parents wanted.

While SWLH can take a great deal of credit for raising local awareness of the issues and for increasing the number of responses to the consultation, in the end the adjudication was not based on the numbers supporting or opposing, or on the principles that we highlighted, and for future campaigns the full adjudication is well worth reading and instructive.

Though the Adjudicator acknowledges that a large group strongly opposed the principle of faith schools, he says:

Clearly we cannot reject the SDBE [Southward Diocese Board of Education] proposal on the basis of the objections in principle: the law provides for faith schools… (para 40)

and he appears to have been convinced by Diocesan claims that their admissions policy would be inclusive and proportionate (despite its setting aside of one third of places for children of practising Christians and a further 7% for other faiths). However, he did note that earlier consultations had found “little evidence of demand for faith-based provision” (para 39) and that “Whilst there is no Church of England school in the Borough of Kingston, such schools are available in neighbouring boroughs and within reasonable travelling distance” (para 22). The decisive factor seems to have been the distinctiveness of the KET bid and its potential to increase local choice and diversity:

The KET proposal is stronger than the SDBE proposal when examined from the point of view of diversity of provision and local support.  Its proposal would lead to the establishment of a unique new option which would be welcomed by parents.” (para 41)

These are all local factors and arguments worth looking out for in future local campaigns; in particular, it is clear that while “choice and diversity” continue to be political buzz-words, alternatives to faith-based schools must be seen to contribute to that.

Whether it was the SWLH that tipped the balance or not, our campaigning certainly raised our profile locally, established good contacts with the local press, attracted active support from a number of new people, and allied us with the majority party on Kingston Council – all good results, though nothing like as good as the final decision.

See also

• http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/8770507.BREAKING_NEWS__Council_beats_church_in_race_to_run_new_school/
• http://www.kingston.gov.uk/information/news_and_events/news.htm?id=111406
• http://www.schoolsadjudicator.gov.uk/upload/STP526%20Kingston%20Comp.doc

Marilyn Mason was a teacher for 20 years before working as Education Officer of the British Humanist Association (BHA) from 1998 to 2006. She is a campaigning member of South West London Humanist group, affiliated to the BHA.

The British Humanist Association has warned that ‘free schools’ could create ethnic and religious enclaves, argued that they are not protected by enough educational regulation, and echoed concerns that substantive measures to counter-balance their ‘freedom’ in order to prevent against extremists running the schools are entirely lacking. It seems that many of the critics’ fears about educational quality of these largely unregulated schools is shared by parents and teachers.

Coalition plans for a generation of “free schools” suffered a blow today as it emerged they were backed by a minority of parents.

Research found that just a quarter of adults wanted new-style schools run by parents and private companies in their area and the majority opposed proposals to give them extra independence.

The study by the National Union of Teachers also revealed that three-quarters of parents were unaware that a free school was being planned the local community.

The disclosure prompted claims that the reforms were “not wanted or needed” and that the Government was attempting to hide them from local families.

Free schools are among the Coalition’s most controversial education reforms. Under proposals, parents’ groups, charities, businesses and teachers can apply to open their own Government-funded school free of local council control.

The schools will be given more freedom than ordinary state schools, including the power to hire teachers without formal teaching qualifications.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8235886/Free-schools-not-wanted-by-parents-says-research.html

Science teacher and writer Alom Shaha celebrates a rare piece of original research by school children and how it found its way into a Royal Society journal.

A scientific paper published today in the prestigious Royal Society journal Biology Letters reveals that “bumble-bees can use a combination of colour and spatial relationships in deciding which colour of flower to forage from.” This is an exciting discovery that deepens our knowledge of the buff-tailed bumble-bee (Bombus terrestris) and is described in an accompanying commentary as a “significant piece of research giving a novel insight in the colour and pattern vision of the bee”.

However, there is a more important discovery that is included in the paper, a discovery that I hope readers of this blogpost and the original paper will share with as many people as possible – the authors, while researching the behaviour of bees, ”also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before”.

As you’ve probably guessed, the authors of this particular paper are not your usual research team. The research was “conceived, carried out, summarized and written up by a class of 8 to 10 years olds” from Blackawton Primary School in Devon. The paper is deliberately written in “kids speak”, which, as well as being charming (“if we are lucky we will be able to get them to do Sudoku in a couple of years’ time”), serves as a constant reminder that this work was genuinely carried out by young schoolchildren.

Continues: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2010/dec/22/schoolchildren-bumble-bee-research-journal

REV JANINA AINSWORTH, Chief education officer, Church of England

The CoE strongly supports the requirement for collective worship. There is plenty of flexibility in the provision to enable all pupils to benefit without compromising their faith or lack of it.

Collective worship makes a major contribution to pupils’ personal development. Through their involvement in planning and delivering worship, engaging with external speakers and discussion as a whole-school community, understanding of spiritual and moral issues can be extended and enriched.

The unique contribution of worship is to involve pupils in a shared experience of reflection and silence, singing and story framed with reference to Christianity and a variety of other religious traditions.

It is part of the religious education of every child, whatever their family tradition, to think about God and other religious ideas. There is no expectation of commitment and the exposure to the range of religious traditions encourages community cohesion.

It is a parent’s right to withdraw their child from worship, and the very few who take up that right demonstrates that schools have found exciting and creative ways of using collective worship to further children’s spiritual and moral development.

Versus…

ANDREW COPSON, Chief executive, British Humanist Association

Good, inclusive school assemblies of a moral and reflective nature, which can bring the school community together to celebrate shared values, news and achievements are a proven success in maintaining a supportive and cohesive school community.

Many schools do this well and their pupils and staff benefit greatly from it. They are all breaking the law. The law requires daily acts of collective worship which should be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.

The continued existence of this prescriptive, coercive, educationally bankrupt and religiously chauvinist law is an affront not only to the rights of children to freedom of conscience but to the whole concept of a plural and democratic society.

It is the outdated product of a more homogenous society of six decades ago, less respectful of dissent and conscience that a liberal society of the 21st century, where all people – not just Christians – should be free to express and live by their beliefs.

All replies: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6065655

EDMONTON – A petition was launched by Alberta’s former education minister Wednesday that calls for the Roman Catholic and Protestant separate schools to be abolished.

Written by ex-minister David King, the petition asks Albertans to decide whether such schools should exist when many religions go unrepresented within Alberta education.

“The Government of Alberta is in the process of updating our education laws for the 21st century,” King said.

“It’s important for Albertans to ask each other whether separate-but-equal schools for only two of many religious denominations belong in 21st century Alberta.”

Separate schools don’t just shut out students — they also deny learners of inclusion and diversity, said King.

“We should have children of different faiths and cultures learning together in the same schools,” he said.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/12/02/16398766.html

A Muslim academy in Portsmouth has been the target of two hate crimes in the past fortnight, police have said.

In the first incident, a brick with a racist message on it was thrown into the Portsmouth Muslim Academy, on Old Commercial Road, on 13 November.

A beer bottle was then thrown through a window at the front of the building last Friday.

The city’s Jami Mosque was also targeted twice in two days on 12 and 13 November.

The mosque was first attacked a day after an Islamic group, Muslims Against Crusades, burned remembrance poppies in London during a two-minute silence to mark the anniversary of Armistice Day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-11837234

Meanwhile, a new report to be published on Saturday claims there is an “exponential increase in Islamophobia”, linked back to 9/11 and 7/7.

In one incident, a Muslim woman wearing a niqab, or veil, and burka was punched and abused while returning home on a bus from a shopping centre while her petrified infant daughter looked on. Other women stopped wearing the veil or burka to reduce the risk of violence. Researchers also found Muslim men who had shaved off their beards and changed other aspects of their appearance to stop being identified by their faith.

The study found that Muslims and mosques in the suburbs face a higher level of threats than those in big cities.

According to Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Hate Crime, by the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre, the Muslim woman was punched and called a terrorist.

Such attacks often go unreported, and in this case the woman was too scared to inform the police, the report says.

Full article: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/faith/article2822246.ece

And a new All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia has been launched in the House of Commons.

At its inaugural Annual General Meeting, members elected Keighley and Ilkley Conservative MP Kris Hopkins to serve as its Chair with Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader Simon Hughes and Labour peer Lord Janner of Braunstone as Vice-Chairs. The Group has so far attracted the interest of more than 20 MPs and peers from across both Houses of Parliament.

Mr Hopkins thanked attendees for being part of what he described as a “momentous occasion.” He said: “Whilst challenges will undoubtedly arise in the weeks and months ahead, my colleagues and I are hugely committed to the task in hand. I believe there is already a very strong resolve amongst members to better understand the complex issues involved, and to propose considered, evidence-based policies to tackle Islamophobia wherever it exists.”

Full release: http://iengage.org.uk/images/stories/appgpr241110.pdf

As it happens, The Spectator and columnist Melanie Phillips published an apology today to a prominent British Muslim withdrawing accusations of antisemitism.

Today’s apology, published on the Spectator website, follows an out of court settlement in which the magazine and Phillips agreed to pay Mohammad Sawalha “substantial” compensation and his legal costs… over a blog post by Phillips published in July 2008 in which she accused him of calling British Jews “evil/noxious”.

The apology stated: “On 2 July 2008 we published an article entitled ‘Just look what came crawling out’ which alleged that at a protest at the celebration in London of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, Mohammad Sawalha had referred to Jews in Britian as ‘evil/noxious’.

“We now accept that Mr Sawalha made no such antisemitic statement and that the article was based on a mistranslation elsewhere of an earlier report. We and Melanie Phillips apologise for the error.”

… Sawalha, a long-time campaigner for community cohesion in Britain, took the dispute to the high court after the Spectator initially refused to correct Phillips blog post, which alleged that he had referred to Jews in Britain as “evil/noxious” at a protest in London of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/25/spectator-apology-muslim-antisemitism

But as Monday’s Panorama showed, there are Islamic “weekend schools” in Britain using anti-semitic and in various other ways nasty literature based on the Saudi Arabian curriculum today. David Goldberg outlines the chilling and sometimes gory detail of Saudi Arabia’s record on anti-Semitism, then says:

It is stating the obvious to affirm that such hate literature, indeed racist literature of any kind, cannot be tolerated in any multicultural, multiethnic society. What Saudi Arabia teaches at home is, regrettably, its own concern; but the kingdom needs to be told in no uncertain terms that peddling such poison in its schools and universities is abhorrent to civilised values, and exporting it for the use of schoolchildren in the UK is totally unacceptable.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that Ofsted has no control over the curriculum content taught by faith schools, such as those highlighted in the Panorama programme. Yet another reason why I, along with my colleague Rabbi Jonathan Romain, am opposed to the vogue of this and the previous government for encouraging more faith schools. Without adequate supervision, far from promoting tolerance and respect for other faiths, these new schools will merely perpetuate in pupils a sense of their religion’s unique superiority and exclusivity.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/nov/24/saudi-arabia-antisemitic-textbooks