Guernsey’s Catholic schools have been saved from possible closure after a new anti-discrimination meaure proposing to bar “discrimination” against non-believing teachers in faith schools was voted down by the island’s legislature.
That the body proposing the law change - the Committee for Employment and Social Security - was unwilling to compromise on their proposals after meeting with the local diocese, Portsmouth suggests more clashes may be in store. New laws, described as an anti-discrimination policy, would ban Catholic schools from requiring headteachers - and other senior staff - to be practicing Catholics.
Currently, Catholic and other Faith schools enjoy exemption from anti-discrimination policies in specific situations - one of these being the stipulation that senior teaching staff at Catholic schools be practicing Catholics. These posts include head teacher, deputy head teacher and curriculum leader of Religious Education. Secularists and others have criticised the exemption as discriminatory and prejudicial to the education of children, with one group attempting a court case against the practice in 2019. Although this case was denied a hearing at the High Court, campaigners have continued to work for revisions of the law in question.
Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth warned Guernsey’s Catholic schools could close for good if the new legislation was passed by the island territories’ parliament earlier this week. Representatives on that body, the States of Guernsey, amending the law to reintroduce traditional exemptions for faith schools, avoiding further conflict with faith communities - and, according to Bishop Egan, human rights violations. In a letter, sent out to teachers and parishioners on Guernsey, Egan accused the proposed law of "not recognising our rights to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as protected by the universal declaration of human rights”. Bishop Egan, aged 65, instead urged local Catholics to lobby their representatives, asking them to back an amendment tabled by the Education, Culture and Sport Committee that neutered the proposed changes.
Hostility towards religious schooling amongst the drafters of the bill was deeply disappointing, said Bishop Egan, drawing attention to the high educational standards of Guernsey’s Catholic schools. Secularist pressure group Humanist UK revealed it worked with politicians to draft the legislation - and warned that, in their eyes, the status quo was an “unacceptable” infringement of the rights of teachers. The legislation represented a “major step forward for human rights and equality in Guernsey” - and should have been “embraced and celebrated by all.”
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