{"id":145401,"date":"2025-11-20T07:55:38","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T07:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2025\/11\/20\/www.politics.co.uk\/?post_type=press-release&p=145401"},"modified":"2025-11-20T07:55:38","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T07:55:38","slug":"northern-ireland-re-curriculum-is-indoctrination-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"press-release","link":"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/opinion-former\/press-release\/2025\/11\/20\/northern-ireland-re-curriculum-is-indoctrination-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland RE curriculum is \u2018indoctrination\u2019 \u2013 Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court has ruled in favour<\/a> of a non-religious father and his child that the exclusively Christian teaching of Religious Education (RE) and collective worship in Northern Ireland are \u2018indoctrination\u2019. Alongside mandatory Christian collective worship and a \u2018stigmatising\u2019 right of withdrawal, this is therefore discriminatory under human rights law. This ruling will have wide-ranging implications for the teaching of RE in Northern Ireland and collective worship across the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

The case is known as JR87<\/em>, and the original judgment in the High Court of Northern Ireland in 2022 was that \u2018religious education and collective worship are not conveyed in an objective, critical, or pluralistic manner in Northern Ireland [schools].\u2019 However, the Northern Ireland Department of Education appealed at the Court of Appeal last October. It ruled that while the RE curriculum was not objective, critical, or pluralistic, this was not sufficient to conclude there had been a breach of human rights law as this didn\u2019t amount to indoctrination. The Court also ruled that the right to withdraw was not stigmatising. Northern Ireland Humanists intervened in the case.<\/p>\n

The father and child appealed this decision to the Supreme Court, which has now ruled that a curriculum not being \u2018objective, critical, or pluralistic curriculum\u2019 and its being \u2018indoctrinating\u2019 are \u2018two sides of the same coin\u2019. The Court also ruled that the right of withdrawal is clearly stigmatising in a context where no other children are withdrawn. Parents having a \u2018reasonable apprehension\u2019 of such stigma is \u2018sufficient\u2019 to mean they do not have to have to have actually withdrawn their children and found that stigma does indeed occur.<\/p>\n

RE curricula must be objective, critical, and pluralistic<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ruling requires that RE curricula should not proselyte or indoctrinate, and that parental right of withdrawal alone from RE and collective worship is not a sufficient justification for having a non-objective, uncritical, or non-pluralistic syllabus.<\/p>\n

RE in Northern Ireland is almost entirely Christian, with only one module on \u2018World Faiths\u2019 at secondary school level. The core syllabus<\/a> was written by the four big churches and starts with \u2018LEARNING OBJECTIVE 1: THE REVELATION OF GOD\u2019.<\/p>\n

Unlike RE in the rest of the UK, there is rarely inclusion of humanism, despite the growing population of non-religious people in NI, particularly amongst younger people. Northern Ireland Humanists has argued that RE and school assemblies should reflect the diverse beliefs of the population, both religious and humanist.<\/p>\n

Mandatory Christian collective worship ruled discriminatory<\/strong><\/p>\n

Northern Ireland Humanists\u2019 parent organisation Humanists UK has campaigned for over a decade to repeal the mandatory Christian collective worship requirement across all four nations of the UK. Parental withdrawal is not a sufficient solution to enforcing Christian worship on students, as it requires students being pulled out of important communal activities like other parts of school assemblies and often left with little alternative. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has also called for the nations of the UK to allow students under the age of 16 to withdraw from collective worship without the need for parental consent.<\/p>\n

The peculiar case of the UK being the only sovereign country to enforce mandatory Christian worship on students now has to be reexamined.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland Humanists Coordinator Boyd Sleator commented: <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018This judgment is a historic win for the rights of children in Northern Ireland. The Supreme Court has concluded that the RE syllabus is \u201cindoctrination\u201d and the right to withdraw from RE and mandatory collective worship is insufficient to deal with this.<\/p>\n

\u2018This ruling should also prompt the governments in England, Scotland, and Wales to revisit the requirement for mandatory collective worship. We hope it is now repealed.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a non-religious father and his child that the exclusively Christian teaching of Religious Education (RE) and collective worship in Northern Ireland are \u2018indoctrination\u2019. Alongside mandatory Christian collective worship and a \u2018stigmatising\u2019 right of withdrawal, this is therefore discriminatory under human rights law. This ruling will have wide-ranging… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":97848,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145401","press-release","type-press-release","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNorthern Ireland RE curriculum is \u2018indoctrination\u2019 \u2013 Supreme Court - Politics.co.uk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/opinion-former\/press-release\/2025\/11\/20\/northern-ireland-re-curriculum-is-indoctrination-supreme-court\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Northern Ireland RE curriculum is \u2018indoctrination\u2019 \u2013 Supreme Court - Politics.co.uk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court has ruled in favour of a non-religious father and his child that the exclusively Christian teaching of Religious Education (RE) and collective worship in Northern Ireland are \u2018indoctrination\u2019. 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