Will Labour stop discrimination against teachers in faith schools?

Ed Miliband’s new education chief says ‘All the evidence suggests that the quality of an individual teacher is the single most important factor in a child’s educational progress’. It’s great to see Tristram Hunt so passionate about the value of quality teaching and One Nation Labour focusing on the need properly to support teachers.

However, if Hunt is serious then One Nation Labour must address the issue of discrimination against teachers in state-funded faith schools. Do we really support even one state school being able to hire and fire teachers or set a ceiling on their promotion on the basis of whether they hold and practise the ‘right’ or any religious beliefs?

All types of faith schools (around a third of state-funded schools), from those under Local Authority control to Academies and Free Schools, have the ability to place religious requirements on teaching positions. In reality, some religious authorities think that they have the right to know the intimate details of teachers’ private lives and to use that information to determine whether they can have a job or get a promotion. Or at worst and regardless of how well qualified a teacher is, use personal information to discipline and dismiss on the grounds that her conduct outside of work is ‘incompatible with the precepts’ of the school’s religion.

It is easy to see that not only religion but also marital status, sexuality and other aspects of identity and lifestyle which are completely irrelevant to the quality of a teacher could be taken into account by faith schools in their approach to employment. The current system, unfortunately developed under New Labour, discriminates against many teachers, especially atheists, and at all levels. Catholic schools in particular have a longstanding problem hiring suitably qualified – and suitably Catholic – headteachers.

Hunt’s position is that it is crucial to have the best teachers in classrooms, so it follows that it must be bad for pupils when schools may not hire the best teachers because of the wide religious requirements they attach to positions. Unbelievably, Labour has been silent on this issue, just as the party has not spoken out against the wide religious and, in effect, class discrimination by faith schools in their admissions.

Labour has ignored this problem for too long. In a changing school system where increasing numbers of schools have even more freedom over their own employment policies, it is vital that Labour prepares now in order to put pressure on in opposition and to tackle this when they are in government. They would have the support of many across the party, as well as teaching unions including the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), which openly oppose the ability of state schools to discriminate on religious grounds.

Labour should properly support teachers and that would mean a change in policy which says that no state-funded school is allowed to place a religious requirement on any teaching or non-teaching job. It’s so simple and obvious, why hasn’t it happened already?

Naomi Phillips is Chair of Labour Humanists