Religious liberty in schools threatened by draft guidance from The Equality & Human Rights Commission.
Parents urged to respond to consultation.
The ‘Equality and Human Rights Commission has launched a public consultation on draft guidance for schools. The guidance proposes ways in which the Equalities Act 2010 applies to standard school policies and processes such as admissions, uniform and discipline. The guidance attempts to set out ways in which schools can ensure that their practices are lawful using examples of hypothetical case studies.
According to the Equalities Act 2010 there are 9 ‘protected characteristics’: age, sex, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, religious belief, race (including nationality), being pregnant or on maternity leave and disability. The Act purports to ensure that these groups of people are protected from discrimination, directly, indirectly, or via harassment or victimisation.
The draft guidance for schools sets out ways in which school policies and procedures can ensure that people who have one of these protected characteristics have a fair chance to achieve and thrive at school. Most of the guidance is perfectly reasonable and one would hope that all schoolteachers and parents would agree that children with disabilities deserve ‘reasonable adjustments’ so that they can take part in school life. We’d also all agree that racism is inexcusable and that schools should not tolerate bullying, harassment or victimisation of anybody. However, throughout the guidance Christians are unjustly demonised and framed as people who seek to restrict the rights of people who identify as LGBT+.
The document sets out four illustrative cases that, in practice, position Christians or others with traditional beliefs as potential perpetrators of discrimination, harassment, or victimisation. The framing is such that a policy maker could reasonably be led to view Christians within their own institution as a group warranting heightened scrutiny, thereby increasing the risk of discriminatory treatment.
The first example is in the section on ‘Harassment’ in Chapter 3:
3.125 During a personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) lesson, a teacher describes homosexuality as ‘unnatural’ and states that he will be covering only straight relationships in the lesson. A bisexual pupil in the class is upset and offended by these comments. This may be direct discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
For many Christians, as well as adherents of other faiths, beliefs about marriage — that sexual relationships belong within marriage, that marriage is between one man and one woman, and that it is a divinely-ordained institution for the begetting and raising of children — are held as matters of deep religious conviction. What is particularly troubling is the prospect that such views could be treated as unlawful solely on the basis that someone feels ‘upset.’ Elevating subjective upset to the level of decisive moral or legal authority is not a sound foundation for fairness or justice.
In the same chapter, under the section on ‘Aiding unlawful acts’ the guidance proposes this example:
3.194 A gay pupil attends a Roman Catholic School. The priest at the associated Roman Catholic Church expresses his displeasure that the pupil is gay and says the pupil should be disciplined because of his sexual orientation. If the school withdrew the pupil from class to ask him questions about his sexual orientation, it would be helping the priest to discriminate against the pupil and therefore acting unlawfully.
The language is tricky here as it is not clear what ‘expresses his displeasure’ really means – an ad hominem rant about a particular pupil would be inappropriate from any adult working in a school, but clear expression of Catholic Church teaching ought to be expected from a Catholic priest. Obviously, no one should sanction disciplinary action based on someone’s ‘sexual orientation’ and to make this point via an association with the Catholic Church is inexcusable evidence of prejudice.
In Chapter 5 (‘Providing education and access to benefits, facilities and services for pupils’) there are two further examples of the way in which Christians have been targeted in this guidance:
5.112 A pupil at a designated Evangelical Christian secondary school tells his class during a religious education (RE) lesson that he has decided to become a humanist. The pupil is told to leave the class and is given a detention for being insubordinate by telling the class that he has renounced the school’s faith. This is likely to be direct discrimination because of religion or belief.
It would be bad practice for a teacher to remove a child from a room for expressing a belief and we should expect that all children should feel free to express their beliefs in their classrooms. This example unfairly frames Christians as authoritarian and inflexible and evangelical Christian schools as places where a child might be unjustly disciplined for questioning the school’s belief system.
But the final example is the most alarming of all:
5.114 A teacher at a Church of England school tells pupils, including a gay pupil, that homosexuality is ‘wrong’. This would be direct discrimination because of sexual orientation.
Here the guidance makes it clear that Christians must be silenced, even in the context of a faith school. This is in striking contrast to statutory guidance on Relationships and Sex education which makes it clear that faith schools can teach from a faith-based perspective:
- All schools may teach about faith perspectives on these topics. In particular, schools with a religious character may teach their distinctive faith perspective on relationships, and balanced debate may take place about issues that are contentious. For example, the school may wish to reflect on faith teachings about certain topics as well as how their faith institutions may support people in matters of relationships and sex. Schools should be clear when they are delivering content that reflects religious belief.
Although there is some perfectly reasonable advice contained within the proposed EHRC guidance, it seems that the writing is on the wall for Christians in schools. It is increasingly easy to fall foul of the law when discussing and defending the faith. Through the consultation the EHRC is asking whether the guidance accurately explains schools’ duties under the Equalities Act 2010. It does not and must not be allowed to stand. Christian Concern have written a guide to the consultation which can be found here. It is imperative that as many parents as possible respond to safeguard religious liberty, as well as their children from further state indoctrination.
ParentPower Team
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