Pages

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Campaigners fight to stop schools recruiting staff based on religion, Islamic Ideology, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Ideology
Campaigners fight to stop schools recruiting staff based on religion

Leading academics, authors and scientists are launching a campaign to stop state-funded faith schools from discriminating against students and teachers on the grounds of religion.

From Monday, such schools will be allowed to include faith as a selection criterion for teaching and non-teaching posts, reserving more places for people from the same religious background.

In some schools this will expand to include the headteacher while in others this would apply to non-teaching jobs, such as classroom assistants and cooks.

The new rules coincide with the launch of Accord, a coalition of Hindu, Christian and Humanist organisations, which claims that they will further restrict the employment rights of staff in state-funded faith schools and that discrimination of this kind is illegal in other state schools.

Accord's supporters also include the scientist professor Colin Blakemore, the former education secretary Tessa Blackstone, novelist Philip Pullman and the philosopher AC Grayling.

Prominent Jewish figures are angry that two rabbis from progressive movements, David Goldberg, emeritus rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John's Wood, and rabbi Jonathan Romain, of Maidenhead Synagogue, are involved with Accord, with Goldberg saying that faith schools caused people "to live parallel lives".

http://newageislam.com/campaigners-fight-to-stop-schools-recruiting-staff-based-on-religion/islamic-ideology/d/704


0 comments: