The teaching of non-religious beliefs or worldviews in public schools in the English legal system

Abstract

This paper studies the relatively recent phenomenon of the recognition of the teaching of non-religious beliefs or worldviews in the English education system, which has occurred in parallel to the recognition, that has also been taking place in recent decades in the legal systems of the British Isles, of the forms of marriage characteristic of these so-called belief groups or secular groups. The teaching of these worldviews has been incorporated into the English education system as part of the subject of religious education, which is compulsory in state schools, through a broad interpretation of the concept of ‘other religions’ and primarily because of the requirement to apply English law in a manner consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights, unlike in other countries such as Wales, where a separate category has been established to cover the teaching of these non-religious beliefs. This incorporation of humanism and non-religious worldviews in general into the curriculum of public schools has recently received significant judicial backing, through case law whose essential features are also studied in these pages. This paper also gives consideration to some of the consequences and derivatives that this issue presents more broadly, such as those derived from the necessary full guarantee of the principle of equality between religious and non religious beliefs, or those related to the definitional problems posed by the legal notion of religion itself or that of nonreligious worldviews.