Curriculum
Schools must ensure that there is a broadly balanced curriculum which ‘promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the schools and of society and prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experience of adult life’. This must include religious education and sex education. Religious education must be included in the national curriculum but parents can request that the child is excused from religious worship or instruction. The ECHR has held that religious education should not proselytise or involve any kind of indoctrination.
Children of compulsory school age currently need parental consent before they can decide whether to participate in collective acts of worship and/or religious education in school. In 2006 the Joint Committee of Human Rights expressed concerns that this failed to acknowledge Gillick competent children’s rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under both Article 9 of the ECHR and Article 14(1) of the UNCRC.
The LEA must also ensure that steps are taken to ensure that sex education is given in a way which has due regard to the value of family life and moral considerations.
Children of compulsory school age currently need parental consent before they can decide whether to participate in collective acts of worship and/or religious education in school. In 2006 the Joint Committee of Human Rights expressed concerns that this failed to acknowledge Gillick competent children’s rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion under both Article 9 of the ECHR and Article 14(1) of the UNCRC.
The LEA must also ensure that steps are taken to ensure that sex education is given in a way which has due regard to the value of family life and moral considerations.
