The UK Supreme Court has delivered an important judgment on religious education in a Northern Ireland State primary school, ruling that the current way religion is taught amounts to ‘indoctrination’, and that the right to withdraw a child from RE class should not be unduly burdensome on the child. The ruling does allow that RE class can give a special place to Christianity in view of Northern Ireland’s history, but that religion must be taught in an “objective, critical and pluralistic” manner. This will be tricky to pull off, because done the wrong way, you can easily end up relativising religion, and that would not be “objective, critical and pluralistic” at all. There is really no neutral way to teach religion.
The case in question involved a young girl from Belfast and her father. Both argued that their school’s Christian-centred religious education and daily worship practices failed to respect their non-religious beliefs, breaching their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. These include the right to education that respects a family’s convictions, and the right to freedom of religion or belief.
The school followed Northern Ireland’s “core syllabus”, a statutory curriculum that focuses heavily on Christianity for obvious historical reasons. The RE course was devised by the four main Churches in the North. The parents did not object to learning about religion, but said the teaching was not ‘objective’ or ‘pluralistic’ enough for a publicly funded school.
A key point in this case was the statutory “right to withdraw”. In both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, parents can request that their child be exempted from religious education or worship. But the parents said this right was unworkable in practice. Their daughter would have been the only child to leave the classroom, creating a risk of embarrassment or social isolation. No meaningful alternatives existed, the court said, and the burden fell on the parents to negotiate arrangements with the school. The courts accepted that this made the right more theoretical than real. (Interestingly, no-one ever seems to worry about the embarrassment a child might feel when they are withdrawn from sex education class).
The Supreme Court ultimately found that the school’s approach breached the family’s human rights. It agreed that the teaching was not “objective, critical and pluralistic”. As mentioned, is such a way to teaching religion achievable in practice, or do you automatically end up relativising all religions? (This is one of the questions, Dr John Murray, Chairman of The Iona Institute, takes up in his paper, ‘Will Modern Tolerate Catholic Schools?’)
Although the ruling applies to this this specific school, for this particular family, the reasoning makes clear that similar practices in other similar schools could also be unlawful. The warning is gentle but unmistakeable: publicly funded religious education must be educational, not devotional, and withdrawal must be easy and non-stigmatising. The fact that the school in question is State-run may mean the ruling has no effect on Catholic schools.
In the North, 48,896 Protestant children and only 6,281 Catholics attend these State-funded, State-run schools. Another 25,453 are from other religions (including non-denominational Christianity) or have no religion.
The North’s Education Minister, Paul Givan, has promised to ensure that a Christian ethos in the region’s public schools is maintained. We will see what happens.
