Source: Telegraph
All non-faith schools will be forced to teach non-religious views following a landmark judgment by the High Court that ruled the Education Secretary unlawfully excluded atheism from a new GCSE
All non-faith schools will be forced to teach non-religious views following a landmark judgment by the High Court that ruled the Education Secretary unlawfully excluded atheism from a new GCSE.
The decision was met with fierce opposition by religious groups which argued “humanistic ideas already dominate the rest of the curriculum”, while teachers warned a slow official response might risk wasting valuable teaching time and resources.
The ruling was a victory for three families, supported by the British Humanist Association, who claimed Nicky Morgan had taken a “skewed” approach and was failing to reflect in schools the pluralistic nature of the UK.
Allowing their application for judicial review, Mr Justice Warby, sitting in London, ruled there had been “a breach of the duty to take care that information or knowledge included in the curriculum is conveyed in a pluralistic manner”.
Changes to Religious Studies GCSE subject content were announced last February, leading to complaints over the priority given to religious views – in particular Buddhism, Christianity, Catholic Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism. David Wolfe QC, for the three families, told the judge at a recent hearing there was widespread concern “about the Secretary of State’s failure to comply with her duty of neutrality and impartiality as between religious and other beliefs”.
Categories: Belief, Education, The Muslim Times, UK