A Northern Ireland primary teacher has used a little-known law to withdraw from delivering Religious Education. The teacher, Javed Love, is now partnering with Northern Ireland Humanists to guide other teachers in how to do the same. But the situation is different in the Republic...
The Irish government has a duty under the Good Friday Agreement to take “comparable steps” to strengthen human-rights protection in Ireland, in line with developments in Northern Ireland. A recent UK Supreme Court case found that religious education arrangements in Northern Ireland schools breached the...
Here are ten important points about the right to not attend religious instruction in Irish schools. This right is enshrined in Article 44.2.4 of the Irish Constitution. Its purpose was and is to protect religious minorities in the education system. Constitutional rights are not worth...
Next Tuesday, 16 December, is the closing date for parents to respond to the Department of Education’s misleading survey on the future of primary schools. If you are thinking about responding, please be aware of the following facts. The survey misleadingly implies that you are...
Parents have the right to not be put in a position that they must reveal their religious or philosophical beliefs to their children’s school or teachers. This is one of the human rights principles that the UK Supreme Court raised in the recent case regarding...
The Supreme Court in the UK has found that the religious education course in Northern Ireland schools was indoctrination. Atheist Ireland has been using the word ‘indoctrination’ in relation to schools in Ireland for a long time. We get a lot of criticism for using...
The recent case at the UK Supreme Court, about withdrawing from religious education in schools, highlights the flaws in a WRC decision in Ireland three years ago. The UK case was based on the European Convention on Human Rights, which Ireland has ratified (European Convention...
In the case yesterday at the Supreme Court in the UK on the Northern Ireland education system, the court found that: The religious education course in Northern Ireland Schools was ‘indoctrination’. Northern Ireland was pursuing an aim of indoctrination by not ‘respecting’ parents’ philosophical beliefs....
A Supreme Court judgement in the UK today is of great relevance to the Irish education system, and reinforces the points made by Atheist Ireland in a recent article The right to an objective education goes beyond avoiding ‘faith formation‘. The UK Supreme Court case...
The Department of Education, school Patron bodies, TDs, the ETBs, and others often refer to ‘faith formation’ in schools, by which they typically mean religious instruction according to the rites of a particular religion. A consequence of this is that the Constitutional right of children...