Schools - religious observance and religious education: consultation analysis

2. Consultation methodology and challenges

Introduction

The consultation on proposals to amend the legislation on RO and RME in schools ran from 14 November 2024 to 26 January 2025 on the Scottish Government Citizen Space website (a public platform for consultations).

Public consultation

The public consultation received 533 responses.

The data review and cleaning process identified three individual respondents who had each submitted duplicate responses.

To avoid over-representing these individuals, duplicate responses were combined into a composite submission for each individual. Where differences occurred (for example, one respondent submitted two consultation responses where the answer to a yes/no question differed), the more detailed or consistent response was retained. This introduces some subjectivity but was necessary to ensure analytical integrity.

A total of 530 validated responses have therefore been included in the final analysis.

Respondents

The vast majority (97%) of consultation responses were submitted through Citizen Space with the remainder (3%) submitted to the Scottish Government directly by email. The Respondent Information Form (RIF) captures further information about individual and organisation respondents, as detailed below.

The vast majority (88%) of consultation responses are from individuals, Table 2.1. The remainder of responses (12%) are from organisations. Further, many organisation respondents indicate that they consulted and engaged with relevant stakeholders when preparing their consultation response.

Base = 530

Individual respondents

A good mix of responses were received from individual respondents, including parents of a school aged child, teachers, and other individual respondents, see Table 2.2. Other individual respondents include, for example, parents of a non-school aged child, grandparents, retired teachers, academics, and those with an interest in the consultation topic.

Base = 458

Note: Multiple response question where respondents could select more than one option and all that applied. Percentages may total more than 100% as a result.

These categories are used to highlight common and differing views of individual respondents (where appropriate) in the remainder of this report. The exception is pupils as the absolute number is small.

Organisation respondents

EKOS, in discussion and agreement with the Scottish Government, then categorised organisation respondents under six broad categories, and Table 2.3, below, shows the number of each type of organisation respondent.

Responses from faith organisations and schools make up almost half (47%) of all organisation respondents. Other organisation respondents include higher education institutions, education bodies, charities, and secular organisations.

Base = 62

These categories are used to highlight common and differing views of organisation respondents (where appropriate) in the remainder of this report.

Campaign responses

Two campaign responses were identified during the data review and cleaning process - one from the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES) and one which could not be attributed to a specific organisation.

Elements of the SCES response are used in 40 other consultation responses, albeit to varying degrees. As in previous consultations, this likely reflects SCES promoting the consultation within their community and through their networks and sharing their suggested responses and key messages. Only one of the 40 responses is a standard campaign response (that is, a direct copy of the SCES consultation response), whilst the remaining 39 are non-standard campaign responses (that is, where respondents have responded to a campaign but have personalised the standard campaign response). A majority (70%) of these campaign responses are from individual respondents, primarily teachers or parents of a school aged child. The remainder (30%) are from organisation respondents, almost exclusively from parent organisations or schools.

A secondary campaign response relates to qualitative responses to Question 4, which is used within 21 responses. An original source for this campaign response could not be identified. A majority (76%) of these campaign responses are from individual respondents, primarily teachers or parents of a school aged child. The remainder (24%) are from organisation respondents, exclusively from schools. Further, four of these respondents refer to the SCES response within their own submission.

Analysis

All responses to the public consultation were moderated by Scottish Government officials in the Directorate for Education Reform to ensure that they were genuine responses to the consultation. This process included screening for offensive/ discriminatory language which might require redaction prior to publication, or if there was a response which was completely irrelevant to the consultation. No responses have been excluded from consultation analysis for either of these reasons.

EKOS then exported consultation responses from Citizen Space into Microsoft Excel for data cleaning, review, and analysis. Where responses were submitted in another format, Scottish Government officials moderated these prior to uploading the documents to Citizen Space.

The analysis gave equal weight to all responses, regardless of whether they were submitted by individuals or organisations. The analysis has sought to identify the most common themes and issues. It does not report on every single or specific point raised.

Summary tables for closed questions are presented in the main report and in appendices. For open-ended questions, the analysis aims to convey both the strength and frequency of the key themes raised. The qualitative analysis identifies the key themes across responses to each question. This means that:

• most chapters in the report contain numbered themes (for example, Theme 1, Theme 2, Theme 3) - these have been set out in order of relative importance with Theme 1 noted by the greatest number of respondents
• themes/points raised have been quantified in some way to articulate the strength of opinion - for example, we use the terms ‘a small number’ (10% or less of respondents), ‘some’ (11% to 25% of respondents), ‘many’ (26% to 50% of respondents), ‘a majority’ (51% to 74% of respondents), and ‘a vast majority’ (75% or more of respondents)

This analysis report includes quotes from respondents who gave permission for their response to be made public. This does not indicate that these comments will be acted upon or given greater weight than others.

Consultation challenges and limitations

The key limitations of the consultation process, based on analysis of the consultation paper and responses received, are outlined below.

Brevity of the consultation paper

The Scottish Government consultation paper was specifically designed to be brief for ease of reading and to encourage more responses to the consultation. Details of the precise mechanism for implementing these changes were limited, as this aspect of the policy was still under development and the intention was that the consultation responses could help inform these considerations. However, the limited detail may have contributed to varied interpretations of the level and nature of the proposed changes to section 9 of the 1980 Act and/or consultation respondents may have found it difficult to make an informed response to some of the consultation questions.

Respondents also strongly called for further clarification and comprehensive guidance from the Scottish Government on how the proposed changes are expected to be implemented consistently in practice. Specific points of clarification raised across the consultation responses include, for example:

• whether the right to withdraw will remain limited to the ‘conscience clause’ (see Chapter 1 for explanation of this) - rather than a general request not to participate in RO/RME, which respondents consider could lead to an increased number of withdrawals and/or RME being diminished as a curriculum subject
• will guidance define ‘due weight’ and consider the maturity of pupils, their understanding of their right to withdraw, and the impact of their decision
• will guidance set out how schools are: to accommodate withdrawal requests; consult and communicate with parents; to capture and incorporate pupil feedback into decisions on participation; to evidence that parents have taken the views of their child into account; and how to resolve differing views between the parents and their child
• how a balance can be achieved between respecting the rights of parents as first and best educators of their child whilst giving due weight to pupils’ views – and whose views take precedence when there is a disagreement between parents and the child, and at which age the child’s view supersedes that of their parent
• whether pupils withdrawn from RO/RME would continue to be given ‘purposeful educational learning’ by the school (in line with current guidance)
• how the legislation would balance children and young people’s right to express their views freely and have them given due weight (Article 12 UNCRC), alongside the rights and responsibilities of parents to provide appropriate guidance and direction (Article 5 UNCRC)
• whether there would be an appeals process, and how the legislation would be enforced

In addition, consultation respondents call for clear and tailored messaging and communications for families on the proposed changes and age-appropriate communication channels to ensure pupils can express their views meaningfully.

Some respondents have misinterpreted the level and nature of the proposed changes

Second, and as noted above, some consultation respondents may have misinterpreted the level and nature of the proposed changes which has influenced their answers to specific questions. For example, both supportive and unsupportive responses are often based on the assumption that changes would give children and young people a new right to withdraw independently.

The proposed changes clarify that children and young people’s views must be given due weight when parents exercise their right to withdraw their child from RO and RME.

The proposed changes mean that the child or young person will have a right to have their views considered when parents are exercising their right to withdraw their child from RO and RME.

Crucially, the proposed changes do not give pupils an independent right to withdraw from RO or RME.

The consultation paper conflates RO and RME

Some respondents feel the consultation conflates RO and RME by grouping them together in both the consultation paper and in legislation.

They argue that this reinforces misconceptions that RME promotes a particular worldview or implies that one religion is ‘correct’. This issue has also influenced how these respondents have answered the consultation questions.

With the exception of consultation respondents who do not feel there is a place for religion or religious education in publicly funded schools, the main points raised by respondents who feel that the consultation paper conflates RO and RME include that:

• there is broad support for RME as a curriculum subject – if it is delivered inclusively and without favouring any one faith
• some consultation respondents feel that there is a need to reform the opt-out system for RO in schools – for example, some perceive that the focus of RO in non-denominational schools is on Christianity. Further, these responses note that Scotland’s Census 2022 shows that a majority of the Scottish population - including the school aged population - is non-religious, and that Scotland is an increasingly secular and religiously diverse country in terms of faith and belief. They suggest that RO in schools, including denominational schools, can constrain teachers’ ability to include pupils of all faiths and belief systems. Support is expressed for pupils to have the independent choice to opt-out of RO and/or opt-in
• some consultation respondents feel that it would be very difficult for denominational schools to implement and manage the proposed changes to RO/RME – these consultation respondents say that RO/RME in faith-based schools forms part of the identity and ethos of the school and is integrated into every aspect of daily school life

Other limitations

Similar to other public consultations, wider limitations of this consultation are that respondents are self-selecting, and the responses may not be representative of the population as a whole.

There is limited response to this consultation from pupils (only three responses were from pupils) - the Scottish Government is also undertaking direct engagement with children and young people including with members of the Scottish Youth Parliament to address this.

The consultation document structure allowed respondents to answer questions independently, in recognition that respondents may answer some questions without expressing views on others – not all questions are answered in all cases, and some responses do not fully answer or align with the specific question asked. Some respondents have inserted many of the points they wish to raise in one or a couple of questions, and there is significant repetition of views expressed across the question set. Judgement was applied to determine the most appropriate placement for each theme within the report.