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British Sunday Schools will be Required to Register with the Government

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British Sunday Schools will be Required to Register with the Government

Under the new extremism proposals in Britain, churches will be required to register Sunday schools with the government.

Though the government claims that the proposals are not targeting Sunday schools, where a young person attends a “religious setting, it would have to be registered with the state and subject to inspection so that the government knows they are there.

“We won’t inspect every one of them, but we will know they exist,” said Ofsted chief, Sir Michael Wilshaw. “If there are concerns – if whistle blowers tell us there’s an issue – then we will go in.” He added: “The government needs to know where these places are and who is running them.”

In spite of assurances by officials that the new proposals aren’t intended to monitor the content taught to children by churches, they do provide for the identification of “unsuitable staff and undesirable teaching.”

The Evangelical Alliance believes the proposals could affect the Church’s ability to run activities for children and young people.

Dr Dave Landrum, director of advocacy at the Alliance, said: “These proposals amount to the state regulation of private religion… Sunday schools in churches are publicly advertised and in open access buildings. It’s highly unlikely that extremist groups of concern are going to register with the government… There are already sufficient laws in relation to the health and safety and safeguarding of young people. It’s misconceived for the government to believe that these proposals will do anything to address the problem it legitimately seeks to solve,” he said.

Should Britain adopt these proposals it will essentially mean that churches would come under government regulation. And it would not just be Sunday schools, but also Sabbath schools run by Adventists, Jews and others. Undesirable teaching would eventually include anything that is not standard, ecumenical and collaborative teaching.

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