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Minister rejects RE proposal
by Margaret Holness, Education Correspondent
THE cross-party Parliamentary committee on human rights has proposed giving those secondary-school children who have “sufficient maturity, understanding and intelligence” the right to withdraw from religious education (RE) and collective worship. The move was disclosed in a report on the committee’s scrutiny of the Education and Skills Bill. The group asked how the failure to include such a provision was “consistent with respect for a child’s right to freedom of thought, conscience and belief”. In a letter to the group earlier this year the Minister for Schools and Learners, Jim Knight, rejected the idea. He pointed out the distinction between worship and RE, which is reinforced by the non-statutory framework endorsed by the main faiths. The C of E’s RE spokesman, the Revd Dr John Gay, said on Wednesday: “When the Government is seeing RE as making a major contribution to social cohesion, this committee is trying to play the secularist card. Its members are clearly ill-informed about the nature of RE.” |
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