WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:06.620 --> 00:00:11.240 So the main problem with faith schools is that they're based on an idea 00:00:11.250 --> 00:00:16.650 that because a child's parents come from a particular religious background 00:00:16.650 --> 00:00:22.529 and have certain religious beliefs, that the children ought to develop those same 00:00:22.529 --> 00:00:29.760 religious beliefs, and that's problematic because religious freedom is a really 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:34.739 really important value and humanists believe that children ought to have the 00:00:34.739 --> 00:00:38.909 opportunity to decide about these very important things, like what you believe 00:00:38.909 --> 00:00:46.170 about your place in the world, by your own sort of powers of reasoning, and of 00:00:46.170 --> 00:00:51.659 course your parents will influence your decisions in some ways or others - 00:00:51.659 --> 00:00:57.150 some of them will be more obvious than others but they shouldn't be able 00:00:57.150 --> 00:01:02.070 to enforce their faith upon you and faith schools are sort of set up with 00:01:02.070 --> 00:01:05.160 that as a kind of underlying premise, I guess. 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:13.979 Unfortunately, faith schools which make up a third of state-funded schools in 00:01:13.979 --> 00:01:21.030 England and Wales are allowed to teach a faith-based doctrinaire version of RE. 00:01:21.030 --> 00:01:26.000 They are, in other words, allowed to proselytize in line with their religion 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:31.770 or denomination, and we see that as problematic because children, regardless 00:01:31.770 --> 00:01:34.649 of the school that they have been sent to, regardless of the background 00:01:34.649 --> 00:01:38.039 they're from, have rights - and one of those rights is freedom of religion or belief 00:01:38.039 --> 00:01:43.409 and freedom of conscience, and if they are being proselytized to at an 00:01:43.409 --> 00:01:48.329 early age, an age where maybe they don't quite have the faculties to identify 00:01:48.329 --> 00:01:54.239 what is a claim and what is a fact, then that freedom of religion or belief is being 00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:55.240 taken away from them. 00:01:59.780 --> 00:02:05.480 Some schools, voluntary aided schools, for example, are entitled to select up to a 00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:09.830 hundred percent of their pupils on the grounds of their religious beliefs. 00:02:09.830 --> 00:02:14.030 We could end up with a hundred percent of children in a school who all come from 00:02:14.030 --> 00:02:18.770 a particular faith background, who all come from the same ethnic background, and 00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:23.720 that's really problematic for society in general because it means that according 00:02:23.720 --> 00:02:28.820 to which school you go to you're sort of segregated off from other people in the 00:02:28.820 --> 00:02:33.860 community, and that's not very good for social cohesion, for inter-communal 00:02:33.860 --> 00:02:35.660 understanding, that sort of thing. 00:02:35.660 --> 00:02:37.940 Dividing children up on the basis of 00:02:37.940 --> 00:02:43.040 those labels is destructive at its core and lots and lots of faith schools do 00:02:43.040 --> 00:02:47.000 this. They select children on the grounds of religion or belief and that has the 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:51.830 effect of segregating children along those lines, and that is just completely 00:02:51.830 --> 00:02:57.530 destructive for social cohesion, for integration, for mutual understanding and 00:02:57.530 --> 00:03:01.190 respect between people of different religions and beliefs. So we believe, of 00:03:01.190 --> 00:03:05.020 course, that all schools should be completely open and inclusive. 00:03:05.040 --> 00:03:10.000 Also, leads to problems like parents pretending to have religious beliefs that they don't have 00:03:10.010 --> 00:03:15.140 in order to get into certain schools. Now that might be entirely understandable 00:03:15.140 --> 00:03:20.150 because parents are very caring and they want the best for their children and 00:03:20.150 --> 00:03:24.440 they want to get the best school for them. But the problem is that the sort of 00:03:24.440 --> 00:03:30.370 segregation and separation that goes on through these admissions policies also 00:03:30.370 --> 00:03:36.290 leads to those schools seeming better when actually it's just that they're 00:03:36.290 --> 00:03:39.420 kind of selecting pupils by the back door 00:03:43.880 --> 00:03:47.960 It might be a reasonable position to say, for a parent to say, that they want their 00:03:47.969 --> 00:03:52.019 children to be raised in line with their religion or belief. Parents have that right, 00:03:52.019 --> 00:03:56.370 that right is enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights but what they 00:03:56.370 --> 00:04:01.220 don't have a right to is for the state to provide a school that meets that need 00:04:01.220 --> 00:04:06.959 whilst disadvantaging others, and that is what faith schools do. There are lots and 00:04:06.959 --> 00:04:14.700 lots of parents around the country who find themselves living close to quite a 00:04:14.700 --> 00:04:19.709 few religious schools, many of which will select on grounds of religion or belief, 00:04:19.709 --> 00:04:25.500 and their freedom of choice, their access to their local schools is 00:04:25.500 --> 00:04:30.930 massively reduced as a result of that. Freedom and rights are all about 00:04:30.930 --> 00:04:35.849 trade-offs, and the presence of faith schools rather than fully open schools 00:04:35.849 --> 00:04:39.630 that everyone can equally access I think clearly don't get that balance 00:04:39.630 --> 00:04:45.419 right, and they champion the rights of some religious people over the rights of 00:04:45.420 --> 00:04:47.880 everyone to equal access.