The United Kingdom Supreme Court yesterday in In the matter of an application by JR87 and another for Judicial Review, (UK SC, Nov. 19, 2025), held that the Christian religious education and collective worship as practiced in a Northern Ireland primary school violates Article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights read in connection with Article 9 of the Convention. Article 2 reads:
No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.
According to the court:
20. JR87’s parents are not Christians and do not profess any other religious beliefs. They are “broadly speaking” humanist in their outlook.
21. ... They do not wish her to be raised as a Christian. They object to her being taught at the School to assume that Christianity is an absolute truth. Their concerns as to religious education and collective worship at the School are heightened given that she is being taught at an age prior to the development of her critical faculties. Rather, JR87’s parents wish to raise her to be caring, ethical, and respectful towards all people, whatever their religious beliefs or otherwise....
32... They were concerned that by the time JR87 had commenced P2 she had absorbed and adopted a religious (specifically Christian) worldview which was not consistent with their own views and beliefs. By way of illustration G [the girl's father] states that, in the absence of any religious exposure at home, his daughter now believes that God made the world, and she repeats and practices a prayer/grace that she was taught at school at snack-time. His concern is that his daughter is learning Christianity and not learning “about” Christianity in a school context that effectively assumes its absolute truth and which encourages her to do the same.
The court held that the parents' right to withdraw their child from religious education and collective worship is not a sufficient remedy because it risks stigmatizing the child and the parents and exposing the parents' non-religious beliefs to the school and the wider school community.
The Court also issued a press summary of the decision.
