Religious education in NI schools breaches human rights, Supreme Court rules

The provision of Christian religious education in Northern Ireland schools does not comply with human rights standards and is unlawful, the UK Supreme Court has ruled.

In a landmark judgment, the court upheld an appeal brought by a pupil at a Belfast school and her father and reinstated an earlier court ruling that the teaching of RE and collective worship breaches human rights as it does not approach the subject in an “objective, critical and pluralist manner”.

Stormont’s Department of Education has said it will provide advice to schools on the “complex” judgment in the near future.

The pupil, known as JR87, was at a controlled primary school in Belfast in 2019 when, as part of the curriculum, she took part in non-denominational Christian religious education and collective worshi