Our Supporters

Faith schools contribute to the fragmentation of our education system and the religious segregation of pupils. This is not conducive to social integration, cohesion and equal opportunities for all. That's why I'm supporting the 'No more faith schools' campaign. I want to see an education system that is free from religious control and that brings together pupils from all backgrounds and beliefs.

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

The societal division of state education can hardly be said to be in the wider public interest.

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.

State-sponsored superstition should have no place in the education of children, who should be left to make up their own minds on the basis of the evidence they see around them. Education should inspire rational thought and display the pleasures of deep understanding; it should not propagate the social poison of divisive dogma.

Religious indoctrination has no place in state schools. It is a matter for the home and only the home. If the situation was reversed and children were encouraged in school not to believe in a god there would be an outcry from the churches. Well then the same consideration should be given to those of no faith.

Religion should be a personal choice for the child, a choice made when they are old enough to form their own opinion. Faith schools are simply a recruitment drive for a belief system.

Allowing schools to discriminate against students on the basis of their parents' religion is socially divisive and fosters intolerance towards people of other faiths. The government should be seeking to eliminate discrimination in the UK school system, not increase it.

My son has just begun primary schooI and I was astonished when I began researching local schools at the unashamed discrimination against children based on the religious beliefs of their parents. In a society which has rightly and proudly legislated against all forms of prejudice it is staggering that this last bastion of discrimination continues to stand in the very core of our society and in the very place where we should be moulding the values of our children.

I believe it is fundamentally wrong to force a child into one or another religion at school. Schooling should be about education only, not segregating children into tribes. This has been proven by many studies to lead to more divided societies and the conflict which arises from such - Northern Ireland for a recent example. Religion can be studied outside school; make schools secular and give all children the same start in life.