The joint education reform initiative from the Church of Scotland and the HSS Humanist Society Scotland • January 2014 By now many of you will have seen the joint proposal of the HSS & Church of Scotland, writes Douglas McLellan, HSS Chief Executive. This opportunity arose late last week and we moved quickly to grasp it. The HSS have a policy that there should be no religious observance in schools. As things stand, the Education (Scotland) Act 1980 makes explicit reference to religious observance as a compulsory act within non-denominational schools. In fact, for schools to end religious observance would require a local referendum in each local authority. Therefore we need to change the 1980 Act to achieve the policy of no religious observance in schools. This would be difficult to achieve on our own and the Church of Scotland have previously expressed a desire to bring in Time for Reflection (TfR) as an alternative. To be clear TfR is not just a name change. It has the clear objective of removing acts of worship and any confessional nature that current religious observance practises contain. Scottish schools should and will continue to help children develop a greater understanding of themselves, their community and the world around them. Current Education Scotland resources designed to help schools plan religious observance activities are already very light on acts of worship. The change in the legislation will help push Head teachers away from tick box prayer assemblies to proper TfR. Furthermore, HSS Education Officer Gary McLelland has pulled together a group to develop additional materials that, if approved by Education Scotland, will offer even more options for Heads Teachers. The joint proposal makes it clear that we both believe there is a need for a closer scrutiny of current practice by Education Scotland and HMIE and that this should be case as well for TfR. Both the Church of Scotland and the Humanist Society Scotland also believe that requiring external visitors to schools to agree with the equality and diversity policy of the school, or local educational authority, would ameliorate situations which have risen in the past. This joint proposal is just a first step in achieving our stated policy ambitions. If the Scottish Government were to bring forward legislation to change the 1980 Act and the Scottish Parliament voted to approve the changes, the HSS and many other like-minded organisations would then have an opportunity to work with civil servants to draft appropriate TfR guidance for schools and then work with Head Teachers to ensure that TfR is truly inclusive and equal for all. “ Share on: FacebookTwitterLinkedInPinterestEmail ×
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