Accord is a wide coalition of organisations, including religious groups, humanists, trade unions and human rights campaigners. We share a common view on many issues to do with state-funded schools and believe that the current legislation on faith schools in particular is counter-productive.
We campaign to make admissions and recruitment policies in all state-funded schools free from discrimination on grounds of religion or belief.
We want schools to follow an objective, fair and balanced syllabus for education about religious and non-religious beliefs.
We want accountability under a single inspection regime for Religious Education, Personal, Social & Health (PSHE) education and Citizenship.
We believe all schools should provide their pupils with inclusive, inspiring and stimulating assemblies in place of compulsory acts of worship.
Misrepresenting religious belief or commitment has again been found to be the most common way school admission rules are cheated, inviting further opprobrium about the use of religiously selection admission arrangements by some faith schools.
A Catholic Diocese has succeeded in getting the Office of the Schools Adjudicator to prevent families at one of its primary schools having an enhanced chance of accessing a local non-faith secondary.
Efforts in Guernsey to extend religious discrimination protections to teachers working and applying for jobs at faith schools have been dashed after the local Catholic Diocese threatened to close it local schools.
The Diocese of St Edmundsbury & Ipswich has lent its support to a Suffolk County Council proposal to set religiously inclusive admission arrangements for local faith based Voluntary Controlled schools.