Religious Instruction in New Zealand State Primary Schools: Some Issues, Dilemmas, and Resolutions Gregory Lee and Howard Lee
Throughout this year several public discussions have taken place regarding the delivery of religious instruction within state primary schools. Readers of the daily press—especially in the North Island, earlier in 2014—have been alerted to a debate concerning four schools whose boards of trustees, it is claimed, have permitted religious instruction to be imparted during school hours. Two of these schools are in Auckland while the others are located in Palmerston North. Various newspaper articles have stated that an unspecified number of parents in these cities complained formally to the board of trustees of their child’s school that they should not have to notify school personnel if they wanted their son or daughter to not participate in a religious instruction class. These parents’ stance is a reasonable one, we believe, because it is preferable for parents to have to opt their child in as opposed to being required to inform school personnel that their son or daughter is not to receive religious instruction. (The latter action has been referred to as ‘contracting out’.) To put the point another way, it should be assumed that state primary school authorities will not provide any religious instruction to pupils unless their parents or guardians specifically request it. The right for parents and guardians to remove a child from such instruction in a state primary school must be protected, not only as a popular and long-standing convention but also on legal grounds. The position that seems to have been adopted in these four schools is one that was endorsed under the controversial Religious Instruction and Observances in Public Schools Act of 1962. This statute was criticised on several grounds, one of which was that no primary school boy or girl was to receive religious instruction or participate in any religious observance if his or her
parent(s) or guardian objected to this involvement—in writing. Critics noted, correctly, that this ‘contracting out’ principle was at odds with the ‘contracting in’ recommendation advocated in The Report of the Commission on Education in New Zealand (The Currie Report), issued only a few months earlier. We are delighted to see Jody O’Callaghan reporting more recently (The Press, July 24, 2014) that an opt-in arrangement appears to be favoured by more school authorities nationwide, in order to alleviate parental disquiet, and that she notes whenever religious instruction is being delivered that it tends to occur during lunchtime. The latter provision should address the matter of ‘when to deliver religious instruction’ during the school day—given the fact that the school will not be in session formally, during a lunch break—but teachers will still be expected to operate in a loco parentis capacity because children will be present on the school’s grounds. This means that some provision has to be made formally for those children who are not to receive any religious instruction. As The Editor of The Press noted correctly (July 24, 2014), if these children felt discriminated against in terms of their removal then the Bill of Rights Act could be invoked to protect their position. We envisage that school authorities will be keen to avoid the potential for litigation and parental disharmony, all the more so given the recent High Court decision over a student’s length of hair. There is another, albeit related, aspect to the debate that deserves closer scrutiny—the delivery of religious instruction during teaching hours. If the newspaper reports from early 2014 are accurate then the secular principle that underpins the 1877 Education Act might well have been undermined. At the very least it seems to have not been treated seriously. The draftspersons
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of the 1877 statute stated unequivocally that “the teaching [in a public primary school] shall be entirely of a secular character”. The word ‘entirely’ is significant, we maintain, because it signalled that when a school was in session formally or officially—when the nationally prescribed secular, comprehensive, curriculum was being delivered for two hours in the morning, consecutively, and for two hours in the afternoon (again, consecutively)—no religious teaching of any kind was to take place. The legislation was unambiguous and forthright on this matter. It is noteworthy, though, that provision was made in the 1877 Act for the use of school buildings “on days and at hours other than those used for public school purposes.” Such utilisation was to be determined by the school committee members who were responsible also for the general maintenance and operation of an individual public primary school. Education board personnel in any given district throughout New Zealand were given exclusive power under the 1877 Act to nominate the opening and closing hours for those primary schools directly under their administrative control. Accordingly, opportunities were available for religious and other kinds of instruction to be delivered in these schools. As some readers will know, religious instruction was not excluded from state primary schools entirely from 1878 because the 1877 Education Act was interpreted cleverly (by the Reverend James McKenzie) in the late nineteenth century to mean that this instruction could be provided either before or after a primary school was declared open, albeit with what was known as a ‘conscience provision’ in place. Under this provision, parents or guardians were not obliged to have any
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child participate compulsorily in any religious instruction at school. (This principle has its origins in the Education Ordinance of 1847—legislation that was drafted by Governor George Grey during New Zealand’s Crown Colony era [1840–1852].) We contend that, in the late nineteenth century and thereafter, if a state primary school’s authority has endorsed or is endorsing the practice of delivering religious instruction to boys and/or girls during regular school hours—when the secular national curriculum was, and is, to be delivered, free from the influence of any religious denomination—then that authority is running the risk of condoning illegal behaviour. A Ministry of Education official, Katrina Casey, has been quoted earlier this year as saying that “Schools in New Zealand are self-governing and have the freedom to deliver the curriculum in a way that best meets the need of their students, in consultation with their wider community”. Leaving aside the issue of the precise meaning of ‘community consultation’—a matter that has assumed greater significance in Christchurch, with successful High Court legal action against the Ministry of Education by Phillipstown Primary School late last year—Ms Casey is correct in mentioning school authorities’ self-governing capacity and freedom. But it is not (and should not be) a freedom or governance that extends to breaching the law and undermining well-established state schooling conventions that have been in operation since 1877. We are surprised that Ms Casey has asserted that the Ministry of Education has no plans presently to change any policy relating to school-based religious instruction. There does not appear to be a concern on her part that parents at the four primary schools mentioned above had to request that their child(ren) be removed from such instruction if they did not want him or her to participate, especially when this instruction was being delivered in the hours that are reserved typically—if not always—for secular curriculum instruction. We suggest that the Ministry’s stance needs revisiting, assuming that Ms Casey’s statements have been reported correctly. We further recommend that all boards of trustees of state (excluding integrated) primary schools exercise great care when responding to the concerns expressed by parents of children attending their schools. It would be unwise for them to be sanctioning—consciously or otherwise—practices that may be illegal. Such practices ought to attract criticism for not giving due weight to those conventions that have been well established in relation to both secular state primary schools and to secular schooling. These should be familiar to education administrators and, ideally, to all persons associated with public primary schools. In the New Zealand Parliament of 1877 the decision was taken, after protracted and often bitter debate, to adopt a policy of neutrality on the matter of religious instruction in government funded, public, primary schools. This policy was incorporated into education legislation, in the form of a secular curriculum requirement under the 1877 Education Act. The majority of those politicians agreed that a secular schooling approach would obviate the possibility of any one religious denomination coming to dominate state primary schools. Many committed Christians among their ranks felt it was better to endorse a secular schooling principle for these schools than to plump for one denomination, given the unlikelihood of reaching any agreement among themselves about which denomination merited ascendency. (It must be remembered that New Zealanders had not subscribed to the English practice of setting up an Established Church.)
If the generally accepted principle of maintaining a separation between New Zealand churches and the state still holds—as we believe it does, and must—then we might reasonably expect all state (excluding state integrated) primary school boards of trustees and the Ministry of Education to forbid any formal religious instruction from occurring during the hours when a secular curriculum is to be delivered. The Ministry, in particular, has to ensure that its officers understand key elements of political and public debate over secular and sectarian schooling, historically and currently. Such an understanding will help them recognise the possibility that their lack of intervention in the case of those four North Island schools might not constitute ‘best practice’. Moreover, it could encourage the Minister of Education to reassess her view (outlined in The Press, July 25) that parents can bypass one state primary school in preference for another, solely for the reason that they may object to religious instruction being offered at the former. We trust that a more sophisticated understanding of how parental choice and secular state schooling operates will be forthcoming soon from officialdom. Dr Gregory Lee is Professor of History of Education and Education Policy at The University of Canterbury. His brother, Dr Howard Lee, is Professor of Education Policy and History at Massey University in Palmerston North.
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