When: Wednesday 13th March, 7.30pm
Where: online via zoom – click here
The Case Against Faith Schools
Around a third of schools in England are faith schools and, despite the fact that more than half of the British population now identify as non-religious (a figure rising to 68% amongst those aged 18 to 24), the number of these schools has increased steadily since the early 2000’s.
State-funded faith schools can teach that their favoured religious beliefs are true, select pupils on the basis of religious background, teach about sex and relationships from a faith perspective, and employ, promote and remunerate teachers according to their religious beliefs. In the private sector, faith schools have even greater freedoms and, with fewer restrictions on the curriculum, have been found to teach a variety of extreme content, including creationism and pseudoscience. And all this is to say nothing of illegal faith schools, which teach nothing but a narrowly religious curriculum, often in unsuitable conditions and with a total disregard for safeguarding.
In this talk, Dr Ruth Wareham will outline the various problems posed by faith schools to British society and outline some of the work Humanists UK has been doing to ameliorate the situation.
Speaker Bio
Dr Ruth Wareham is a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Birmingham. She was previously Education Campaigns Manager for Humanists UK, where she continues to work as an Education Policy Researcher. Ruth is a qualified primary school teacher and, before entering academia, worked in schools in Birmingham and the West Midlands for six years.
Ruth’s primary research interests sit at the intersection between religion, belief, and education. She is currently working on a book about the place of faith schools in liberal democracies.
