OUR Government continues to railroad through religious academies, further eroding the vital separation between religion and education, and ignoring opinion polls which show time and again that there are clear majorities opposed to faith schools.
The decision to expand the number of state-funded faith schools will increase school admission discrimination against pupils and their parents, and employment discrimination against teachers. Our children are being segregated by religion and ethnicity, and denied the right to a fully balanced education.
A sectarian education system strengthens the walls between us, and this endorsing of faith schools not only entrenches tribal division in our society, it explicitly condones and encourages it.
Our children have the right to an education free from religious obscurantism, and an open and inclusive learning environment where they can just be children, and not religious representatives. This Government is failing them.
Leigh Venus, North-East Humanists, Newcastle.
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