The Department for Education’s protections for the secular community ethos of non-faith academies are inadequate. This enables a consolidation of religious control and undermines accountability, argues Alastair Lichten.
Religious privilege is built into England’s school system, with around a third of state schools having a formal religious designation. But as the National Secular Society’s 2020 report Power grab: Academisation and the threat to secular education found, religious control of education is also extending beyond these faith schools into those which are nominally secular. As the government seeks to turn all schools into academies, the community ethos of non-faith schools risks being eroded.
The ‘NSS articles’ category contains links to my opinion pieces, written while a campaigns officer or head of education for the National Secular Society, before June 2022. You can read the full original of this article here >>>
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