Every so often, a judgment comes along which resets the terms of a debate that has drifted on for decades. The UK Supreme Court's ruling in JR87, concerning a Belfast primary school's approach to religious education (RE) and collective worship, is one of them.
Its implications extend beyond Northern Ireland. They speak directly to long-ignored human rights concerns around the rest of the UK's collective worship laws – concerns ministers and legislators can't simply shrug off any longer.
At the centre of the case was a state school where RE followed a Christian-centric syllabus and collective worship was Bible-based, and a family who chose to challenge these long-standing arrangements in Northern Ireland. The family argued the arrangements were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Supreme Court found the school's setup breached Article 2 of Protocol 1 – the right to education, which includes respect for parents' convictions – read alongside Article 9's protections for freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. The Court agreed that what children experienced wasn't "objective, critical and pluralistic" education. It was, in fact, "indoctrination" – a curriculum designed by churches to encourage pupils to accept Christian belief as true and as the basis of morality.
And the Court did something crucial. It made clear that offering a parental right to withdraw their children from RE or collective worship is not an answer. Withdrawal places an "undue burden" on families and risks isolating children who really should expect equal treatment.
As in Northern Ireland, the law in both England and Wales still mandates a daily act of Christian collective worship in every state school. In Scotland, 'religious observance' is required. The only human rights safeguard is the parental right to withdraw – the very mechanism the Supreme Court has now deemed inadequate.
In practice, Ofsted hasn't monitored compliance in English schools for years, and some schools simply ignore the law because they recognise how hopelessly out of step it is with a diverse, largely nonreligious society. A bill being considered in the Scottish Parliament would make matters worse; it would make it harder for parents to withdraw their children.
The Supreme Court judgment must now force a reckoning. A state-mandated act of worship is hard to square with the Court's insistence that education must respect the full range of pupils' religious and philosophical convictions. You cannot simply patch over a discriminatory default by inviting families to opt out, with all the "undue burden" that brings.
The status quo was shaped to suit vested religious interests – and those interests still exert far too much influence over the education landscape.
The established Church retains privileged seats in the House of Lords, which bishops have used to resist even modest reforms to England's collective worship law. Meanwhile, faith school providers exert immense influence over local authorities, academy trusts, and the Department for Education. Their lobbying power ensures that policies continue to privilege religion.
This influence sustains a system in which state-funded schools can discriminate in their admissions and impose worship on children regardless of their own beliefs. It allows confessional RE to persist. And it encourages politicians to turn a blind eye to equality and human rights concerns, in fear of upsetting religious interests.
The Supreme Court's judgment exposes how inappropriate this settlement is. The law should be protecting children's freedom of belief, not the institutional privileges of religious bodies. Yet the defence of the status quo nearly always comes from institutions with a direct interest in maintaining it.
For years, legal commentators have affirmed that 'religion or belief' includes nonreligious worldviews. The Supreme Court's ruling reinforces this principle, effectively demanding that schools reflect a broad range of modern beliefs – religious and nonreligious – rather than privileging one religion.
Religious education requires serious reform to achieve this balance. Wales has already led the way on this. In England, the recent curriculum review perhaps provides a way forward to ensuring all children and young people have an equal entitlement to a "objective, critical and pluralistic" education about religions and worldviews.
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