In today’s society, it is more important than ever that our children can enjoy a diverse and fair education, and have the chance to learn from each other’s differences. The National Secular Society’s No More Faith Schools campaign is an important step in this direction and provides a platform for those who want an inclusive education to show their support for that.

Collectively we have an obligation to provide children with equal access to education, for that to be as inclusive as possible it needs to be secular. In a world marked by so many divisions it is important we protect our education system as something free from religious prejudice.

If we are aiming for an inclusive society, the fewer divisions we can impose on our growing children the better.

I support this campaign. There is too much segregation in life. As we live together so we grow through sharing and understanding not by reinforcing a faith or belief or one set of values. Children from all faith and belief backgrounds should be educated together and allowed to develop their own beliefs independently and within the rich communities in which we all have to live.

I am a political secularist - I believe the State should adopt a level playing field when it comes to religious belief. Even many religious people now recognise that the State funding of religious schools involves giving special privileges to religious communities that are not afforded to the rest of us. This is unjust, anti-democratic, and should stop.

Religious indoctrination and organised worship should not be part of our educational system. The curriculum should include RE to give children a perspective on the religious views of others that they will meet in life.

It is not the state's responsibility to indoctrinate children with the money of taxpayers, many of whom will not share the beliefs being imparted. Segregating children by religion is likely to perpetuate division; this is true not only in Northern Ireland.

My children are forced to pray and sing to a god that we don't believe in. We have no alternative school near enough for us to walk to, so we have no choice but to attend.

Attending a faith school means that children and their families are likely to interact and socialise with those of the same religion which makes for a segregated society. If our children to grow up compassionate and understanding of others they need to mix with children and teachers of different backgrounds and religions. Dividing our society into faith groups from a young age is setting a time bomb for the future.

The deeply flawed assumption that children 'belong' to their parents' chosen belief system is an integral part of the problem that constrains and ultimately harms children. Schools should be a communal, civil space, a melting pot for all children to learn freely together and to have a shared understanding, development and appreciation of the human values that bind us together. Faith schools do precisely the opposite, in that they limit children's education and are a living, breathing example of the sectarianism that divides society. Faith schools by their very nature frustrate the implementation of the UN convention on the rights of the child to support every child to learn freely and ultimately to be free to hold their own personal beliefs and to live a life according to their own values. School may be the only environment where children from deeply religious households might start to learn about other forms of belief and other ways of living than those espoused by their parents. LGBTQIA children are particularly at risk of isolation, bullying and a deep sense of exclusion within a heteronormative religious school environment. Faith schools celebrate their own limited vision and are set up precisely so as to close off children's avenues. In doing so, they actively prevent children from discovering communities which may often be far more suited to the individual child and the adult they will become. When my children were younger, our family was initially welcomed and then bullied out of a (faith) school which was incredibly the only available local school claiming to be able to accommodate a child from a non-faith background. What should have been a simple degree of inclusivity in the 21st century proved incompatible with the faith school ethos which venerates belief in one particular religion above all else and requires school governors to promote the particular faith of the school often at the expense of simple human kindness. Their vision of accommodation was to leave a six-year-old child alone in a room whilst the rest of the school prayed, to exclude her from a (non-religious) school play and then to harass and blame the parents when we raised concerns. Faith schools and worship in a school environment are damaging to many children, including some of those who later feel that it did them no harm; faith schools normalise the harmful practice of public, enforced indoctrination. The only time that schoolchildren should encounter worship during the school day should be on a field trip to learn about the many and varied belief systems, none of which would be constrained by ending the damaging system of faith schools.