Academies Bill will create irreversible religious divisions in the schools system

7 June 2010

The Academies Bill 'dangerously entrenches irreversible religious privilege in the system' the British Humanist Association (BHA) has said today.

The Academies Bill, which is debated in Parliament for the first time today, represents a step-change in policy, allowing high-performing, state-maintained schools automatically to become Academies. The Academies Bill has bypassed scrutiny by MPs and has been introduced straight into the House of Lords.

Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive, commented, 'We are especially concerned about the provisions of the Bill that will make it compulsory for state-funded religious schools to become religious academies but builds in no analogous protections for community schools to always become inclusive secular Academies. This double standard dangerously entrenches irreversible religious privilege in the system. Religious Academies will increase massively in number, and be totally freed from any sort of curriculum entitlement for our children. The spread of creationist teaching and of biased and counter-educational RE and sex education that occurred under the previous government will receive an additional boost from this Bill.'

'Largely unregulated and with almost total control of their curricula, there is little to prevent these new state-funded but independent religious schools from imposing their religion on staff and pupils. What is to stop new Catholic academies from refusing to teach sexual reproduction in biology, let alone objective sex and relationships education? It was a commonplace of the previous government's defence of the expansion of religious schools to say that at least the national curriculum mitigated the worst excesses of sectarian organisations and churches – now even this protection is to be taken away. Why the new government should not only continue one of the previous government's most unpopular policies – the handing over of large parts of the public education system to sectional religious interests, unfettered by progressive regulation of any sort – but actually accelerate it, is inexplicable.'

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