The National Secular Society has urged a Senedd committee to introduce greater protections for pupils from evangelism, including an explicit prohibition on the promotion of creationism.

The Children, Young People and Education Committee is reviewing the implementation of two recent acts which reformed education in Wales.

Responding to a consultation by the committee, the NSS said the recent case of evangelism at a nonreligious school in Powys demonstrated the need for a specific ban on promoting creationism in schools.

Teaching creationism as fact is not legal in schools in England, but no such prohibitions exist in Wales.

Last year, the NSS uncovered evidence creationism was being promoted by Llanidloes High School’s headteacher Dan Owen, with large wall displays combining science and geography content with quotes from the Bible.

The evangelical ‘Alpha’ course was also promoted by teachers, and bible verses included on student planners.

The NSS highlighted how Owen explicitly justified his campaign of evangelism on the basis that schools must hold daily acts of ‘broadly Christian’ worship. The NSS added the case was “one of many” where collective worship laws open the door to evangelism.

Despite being initiated more than a year ago, the results of a ‘fact-finding’ exercise into evangelism at Llanidloes High School is yet to be published.

The NSS also told the committee that collective worship “cannot be reconciled” with the duty on headteachers and school governors to promote knowledge and understanding of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child among teachers and staff, given the committee which oversees the convention has explicitly called for the repeal of collective worship laws.

In its other recommendations, the NSS said additional training and development should be provided to teachers to fill gaps in understanding around secularism and nonreligious worldviews.

Although the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Act 2021 introduced a requirement for schools to cover secularism as a key concept and include nonreligious worldviews in lessons, the NSS said such views were likely to be “poorly understood” due to their recent introduction.

The NSS also said faith schools should no longer be permitted to teach religion, values and ethics (RVE) in accordance with their religious ethos, arguing the facilitation of confessional RVE means many pupils “continue to be denied access to genuinely non-partisan and balanced education about religious and nonreligious worldviews”.

Although faith schools are entitled to teach RVE from a confessional perspective, they must also to provide families with the option of RVE according to the locally agreed syllabus, which is more pluralistic than the faith-based alternative, should parents request it.

The NSS said it was concerned that some faith schools may try to evade this requirement by pressuring parents to ‘choose’ the denominational RVE ‘option’. It recommended a duty be placed on faith schools to develop the pluralistic option to an equal standard.

The freedom afforded to faith schools to promote their religious ethos in relationships and sex education (RSE) is incompatible with full inclusion of LGBT pupils and families, the NSS also warned.

NSS research previously found all secondary faith schools in Wales where a policy was obtainable taught RSE in accordance with a faith ethos, leading to the teaching of stigmatising and discriminatory attitudes about LGBT people, contraceptives and abortion.

NSS: Ban promotion of creationism to protect pupils

National Secular Society spokesperson Jack Rivington said: “The extensive campaign of evangelism at Llanidloes High School represented a violation of the trust which should exist between pupils, parents, and staff. That it was justified on the basis of collective worship laws demonstrates the need for their removal.

“Needless to say, promoting creationism has no educational justification – it must be explicitly prohibited to protect pupils.

“We urge the Children, Young People and Education Committee to ensure all children in Wales are able to access an impartial and pluralistic education on religion and belief, no matter what kind of school they attend.”